Diagnostics for formation of nonresponse adjustment cells, with an application to income nonresponse in the U.S Consumer Expenditure Survey

This paper discusses the use of some simple diagnostics to guide the formation of nonresponse adjustment cells. Following Little (1986), we consider construction of adjustment cells by grouping sample units according to their estimated response probabilities or estimated survey items. Four issues receive principal attention: assessment of the sensitivity of adjusted mean estimates to changes in k, the number of cells used; identification of specific cells that require additional refinement; comparison of adjusted and unadjusted mean estimates; and comparison of estimation results from estimated-probability and estimated-item based cells. The proposed methods are motivated and illustrated with an application involving estimation of mean consumer unit income from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey.