Growing Regression Trees that Use Sampling Frame Covariates to Explore Response Burden for Use in Survey Design - ARCHIVED

Description: The Economic Directorate of the U.S. Census Bureau is developing coordinated design and sample selection procedures for the Annual Integrated Economic Survey. The unified sample will replace the directorate’s existing practice of independently developing sampling frames and sampling procedures for a suite of separate annual surveys, which optimizes sample design features at the cost of increased response burden. Size attributes of business populations, e.g., revenues and employment, are highly skewed. A high percentage of companies operate in more than one industry. Therefore, many companies are sampled into multiple surveys compounding the response burden, especially for “medium sized” companies.

This component of response burden is reduced by selecting a single coordinated sample but will not be completely alleviated. Response burden is a function of several factors, including (1) questionnaire length and complexity, (2) accessibility of data, (3) expected number of repeated measures, and (4) frequency of collection. The sample design can have profound effects on the third and fourth factors. To help inform decisions about the integrated sample design, we use regression trees to identify covariates from the sampling frame that are related to response burden. Using historic frame and response data from four independently sampled surveys, we test a variety of algorithms, then grow regression trees that explain relationships between expected levels of response burden (as measured by response rate) and frame covariates common to more than one survey. We validate initial findings by cross-validation, examining results over time. Finally, we make recommendations on how to incorporate our robust findings into the coordinated sample design.

Issue Number: 2021001