Design effects for correlated (P_i - P_j) - ARCHIVED

We present empirical evidence from 14 surveys in six countries concerning the existence and magnitude of design effects (defts) for five designs of two major types. The first type concerns deft (p_i – p_j), the difference of two proportions from a polytomous variable of three or more categories. The second type uses Chi-square tests for differences from two samples. We find that for all variables in all designs deft (p_i – p_j) \cong [deft (p_i) + deft (p_j)] / 2 are good approximations. These are empirical results, and exceptions disprove the existence of mere analytical inequalities. These results hold despite great variations of defts between variables and also between categories of the same variables. They also show the need for sample survey treatment of survey data even for analytical statistics. Furthermore they permit useful approximations of deft (p_i – p_j) from more accessible deft (p_i) values.