Survey design

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All (266) (10 to 20 of 266 results)

  • 11. A simulated annealing algorithm for joint stratification and sample allocation
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X202200100010
    Description:

    This study combines simulated annealing with delta evaluation to solve the joint stratification and sample allocation problem. In this problem, atomic strata are partitioned into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive strata. Each partition of atomic strata is a possible solution to the stratification problem, the quality of which is measured by its cost. The Bell number of possible solutions is enormous, for even a moderate number of atomic strata, and an additional layer of complexity is added with the evaluation time of each solution. Many larger scale combinatorial optimisation problems cannot be solved to optimality, because the search for an optimum solution requires a prohibitive amount of computation time. A number of local search heuristic algorithms have been designed for this problem but these can become trapped in local minima preventing any further improvements. We add, to the existing suite of local search algorithms, a simulated annealing algorithm that allows for an escape from local minima and uses delta evaluation to exploit the similarity between consecutive solutions, and thereby reduces the evaluation time. We compared the simulated annealing algorithm with two recent algorithms. In both cases, the simulated annealing algorithm attained a solution of comparable quality in considerably less computation time.

    Release date: 2022-06-21
  • 12. Multiple-frame surveys for a multiple-data-source world
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X202100200008
    Description:

    Multiple-frame surveys, in which independent probability samples are selected from each of Q sampling frames, have long been used to improve coverage, to reduce costs, or to increase sample sizes for subpopulations of interest. Much of the theory has been developed assuming that (1) the union of the frames covers the population of interest, (2) a full-response probability sample is selected from each frame, (3) the variables of interest are measured in each sample with no measurement error, and (4) sufficient information exists to account for frame overlap when computing estimates. After reviewing design, estimation, and calibration for traditional multiple-frame surveys, I consider modifications of the assumptions that allow a multiple-frame structure to serve as an organizing principle for other data combination methods such as mass imputation, sample matching, small area estimation, and capture-recapture estimation. Finally, I discuss how results from multiple-frame survey research can be used when designing and evaluating data collection systems that integrate multiple sources of data.

    Release date: 2022-01-06
  • 13. Growing Regression Trees that Use Sampling Frame Covariates to Explore Response Burden for Use in Survey Design Archived
    Articles and reports: 11-522-X202100100024
    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.
    Release date: 2021-10-29
  • 14. Physician experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States: Adapting an annual survey to assess pandemic-related challenges Archived
    Articles and reports: 11-522-X202100100007
    Description: The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) annually administers the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) to assess practice characteristics and ambulatory care provided by office-based physicians in the United States, including interviews with sampled physicians. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, NCHS adapted NAMCS methodology to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on office-based physicians, including: shortages of personal protective equipment; COVID-19 testing in physician offices; providers testing positive for COVID-19; and telemedicine use during the pandemic. This paper describes challenges and opportunities in administering the 2020 NAMCS and presents key findings regarding physician experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Key Words: National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS); Office-based physicians; Telemedicine; Personal protective equipment.

    Release date: 2021-10-22
  • 15. Harnessing Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to Enhance Identification of Opioid-involved Health Outcomes in the National Hospital Care Survey Archived
    Articles and reports: 11-522-X202100100016
    Description: To build data capacity and address the U.S. opioid public health emergency, the National Center for Health Statistics received funding for two projects. The projects involve development of algorithms that use all available structured and unstructured data submitted for the 2016 National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) to enhance identification of opioid-involvement and the presence of co-occurring disorders (coexistence of a substance use disorder and a mental health issue). A description of the algorithm development process is provided, and lessons learned from integrating data science methods like natural language processing to produce official statistics are presented. Efforts to make the algorithms and analytic datafiles accessible to researchers are also discussed.

    Key Words: Opioids; Co-Occurring Disorders; Data Science; Natural Language Processing; Hospital Care

    Release date: 2021-10-22
  • 16. A method to find an efficient and robust sampling strategy under model uncertainty
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X202100100002
    Description:

    We consider the problem of deciding on sampling strategy, in particular sampling design. We propose a risk measure, whose minimizing value guides the choice. The method makes use of a superpopulation model and takes into account uncertainty about its parameters through a prior distribution. The method is illustrated with a real dataset, yielding satisfactory results. As a baseline, we use the strategy that couples probability proportional-to-size sampling with the difference estimator, as it is known to be optimal when the superpopulation model is fully known. We show that, even under moderate misspecifications of the model, this strategy is not robust and can be outperformed by some alternatives.

    Release date: 2021-06-24
  • 17. Probability-proportional-to-size ranked-set sampling from stratified populations
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000200001
    Description:

    This paper constructs a probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) ranked-set sample from a stratified population. A PPS-ranked-set sample partitions the units in a PPS sample into groups of similar observations. The construction of similar groups relies on relative positions (ranks) of units in small comparison sets. Hence, the ranks induce more structure (stratification) in the sample in addition to the data structure created by unequal selection probabilities in a PPS sample. This added data structure makes the PPS-ranked-set sample more informative then a PPS-sample. The stratified PPS-ranked-set sample is constructed by selecting a PPS-ranked-set sample from each stratum population. The paper constructs unbiased estimators for the population mean, total and their variances. The new sampling design is applied to apple production data to estimate the total apple production in Turkey.

    Release date: 2020-12-15
  • 18. Local polynomial estimation for a small area mean under informative sampling
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100002
    Description:

    Model-based methods are required to estimate small area parameters of interest, such as totals and means, when traditional direct estimation methods cannot provide adequate precision. Unit level and area level models are the most commonly used ones in practice. In the case of the unit level model, efficient model-based estimators can be obtained if the sample design is such that the sample and population models coincide: that is, the sampling design is non-informative for the model. If on the other hand, the sampling design is informative for the model, the selection probabilities will be related to the variable of interest, even after conditioning on the available auxiliary data. This will imply that the population model no longer holds for the sample. Pfeffermann and Sverchkov (2007) used the relationships between the population and sample distribution of the study variable to obtain approximately unbiased semi-parametric predictors of the area means under informative sampling schemes. Their procedure is valid for both sampled and non-sampled areas.

    Release date: 2020-06-30
  • 19. Considering interviewer and design effects when planning sample sizes
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100005
    Description:

    Selecting the right sample size is central to ensure the quality of a survey. The state of the art is to account for complex sampling designs by calculating effective sample sizes. These effective sample sizes are determined using the design effect of central variables of interest. However, in face-to-face surveys empirical estimates of design effects are often suspected to be conflated with the impact of the interviewers. This typically leads to an over-estimation of design effects and consequently risks misallocating resources towards a higher sample size instead of using more interviewers or improving measurement accuracy. Therefore, we propose a corrected design effect that separates the interviewer effect from the effects of the sampling design on the sampling variance. The ability to estimate the corrected design effect is tested using a simulation study. In this respect, we address disentangling cluster and interviewer variance. Corrected design effects are estimated for data from the European Social Survey (ESS) round 6 and compared with conventional design effect estimates. Furthermore, we show that for some countries in the ESS round 6 the estimates of conventional design effect are indeed strongly inflated by interviewer effects.

    Release date: 2020-06-30
  • 20. Robust variance estimators for generalized regression estimators in cluster samples
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201900300001
    Description:

    Standard linearization estimators of the variance of the general regression estimator are often too small, leading to confidence intervals that do not cover at the desired rate. Hat matrix adjustments can be used in two-stage sampling that help remedy this problem. We present theory for several new variance estimators and compare them to standard estimators in a series of simulations. The proposed estimators correct negative biases and improve confidence interval coverage rates in a variety of situations that mirror ones that are met in practice.

    Release date: 2019-12-17
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Analysis (266)

Analysis (266) (60 to 70 of 266 results)

  • 61. The construction of stratified designs in R with the package stratification Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201100111447
    Description:

    This paper introduces a R-package for the stratification of a survey population using a univariate stratification variable X and for the calculation of stratum sample sizes. Non iterative methods such as the cumulative root frequency method and the geometric stratum boundaries are implemented. Optimal designs, with stratum boundaries that minimize either the CV of the simple expansion estimator for a fixed sample size n or the n value for a fixed CV can be constructed. Two iterative algorithms are available to find the optimal stratum boundaries. The design can feature a user defined certainty stratum where all the units are sampled. Take-all and take-none strata can be included in the stratified design as they might lead to smaller sample sizes. The sample size calculations are based on the anticipated moments of the survey variable Y, given the stratification variable X. The package handles conditional distributions of Y given X that are either a heteroscedastic linear model, or a log-linear model. Stratum specific non-response can be accounted for in the design construction and in the sample size calculations.

    Release date: 2011-06-29
  • 62. Replication variance estimation under two-phase sampling Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201100111448
    Description:

    In two-phase sampling for stratification, the second-phase sample is selected by a stratified sample based on the information observed in the first-phase sample. We develop a replication-based bias adjusted variance estimator that extends the method of Kim, Navarro and Fuller (2006). The proposed method is also applicable when the first-phase sampling rate is not negligible and when second-phase sample selection is unequal probability Poisson sampling within each stratum. The proposed method can be extended to variance estimation for two-phase regression estimators. Results from a limited simulation study are presented.

    Release date: 2011-06-29
  • 63. Cost efficiency of repeated cluster surveys Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201100111449
    Description:

    We analyze the statistical and economic efficiency of different designs of cluster surveys collected in two consecutive time periods, or waves. In an independent design, two cluster samples in two waves are taken independently from one another. In a cluster-panel design, the same clusters are used in both waves, but samples within clusters are taken independently in two time periods. In an observation-panel design, both clusters and observations are retained from one wave of data collection to another. By assuming a simple population structure, we derive design variances and costs of the surveys conducted according to these designs. We first consider a situation in which the interest lies in estimation of the change in the population mean between two time periods, and derive the optimal sample allocations for the three designs of interest. We then propose the utility maximization framework borrowed from microeconomics to illustrate a possible approach to the choice of the design that strives to optimize several variances simultaneously. Incorporating the contemporaneous means and their variances tends to shift the preferences from observation-panel towards simpler panel-cluster and independent designs if the panel mode of data collection is too expensive. We present numeric illustrations demonstrating how a survey designer may want to choose the efficient design given the population parameters and data collection cost.

    Release date: 2011-06-29
  • 64. Statistical foundations of cell-phone surveys Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201000211382
    Description:

    The size of the cell-phone-only population in the USA has increased rapidly in recent years and, correspondingly, researchers have begun to experiment with sampling and interviewing of cell-phone subscribers. We discuss statistical issues involved in the sampling design and estimation phases of cell-phone studies. This work is presented primarily in the context of a nonoverlapping dual-frame survey in which one frame and sample are employed for the landline population and a second frame and sample are employed for the cell-phone-only population. Additional considerations necessary for overlapping dual-frame surveys (where the cell-phone frame and sample include some of the landline population) are also discussed. We illustrate the methods using the design of the National Immunization Survey (NIS), which monitors the vaccination rates of children age 19-35 months and teens age 13-17 years. The NIS is a nationwide telephone survey, followed by a provider record check, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Release date: 2010-12-21
  • 65. An interesting property of the entropy of some sampling designs Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201000211385
    Description:

    In this short note, we show that simple random sampling without replacement and Bernoulli sampling have approximately the same entropy when the population size is large. An empirical example is given as an illustration.

    Release date: 2010-12-21
  • 66. Evaluating within household selection rules under a multi-stage design Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201000111243
    Description:

    The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) and the international Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) surveys each involved stratified multi-stage area sample designs. During the last stage, a household roster was constructed, the eligibility status of each individual was determined, and the selection procedure was invoked to randomly select one or two eligible persons within the household. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the within-household selection rules under a multi-stage design while improving the procedure in future literacy surveys. The analysis is based on the current US household size distribution and intracluster correlation coefficients using the adult literacy data. In our evaluation, several feasible household selection rules are studied, considering effects from clustering, differential sampling rates, cost per interview, and household burden. In doing so, an evaluation of within-household sampling under a two-stage design is extended to a four-stage design and some generalizations are made to multi-stage samples with different cost ratios.

    Release date: 2010-06-29
  • 67. A comparison of sample set restriction procedures Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X201000111249
    Description:

    For many designs, there is a nonzero probability of selecting a sample that provides poor estimates for known quantities. Stratified random sampling reduces the set of such possible samples by fixing the sample size within each stratum. However, undesirable samples are still possible with stratification. Rejective sampling removes poor performing samples by only retaining a sample if specified functions of sample estimates are within a tolerance of known values. The resulting samples are often said to be balanced on the function of the variables used in the rejection procedure. We provide modifications to the rejection procedure of Fuller (2009a) that allow more flexibility on the rejection rules. Through simulation, we compare estimation properties of a rejective sampling procedure to those of cube sampling.

    Release date: 2010-06-29
  • 68. Comparing Income Statistics from Different Sources: Aggregate Income, 2005 Archived
    Articles and reports: 75F0002M2010002
    Description:

    This report compares the aggregate income estimates as published by four different statistical programs. The System of National Accounts provides a portrait of economic activity at the macro economic level. The three other programs considered generate data from a micro-economic perspective: two are survey based (Census of Population and Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics) and the third derives all its results from administrative data (Annual Estimates for Census Families and Individuals). A review of the conceptual differences across the sources is followed by a discussion of coverage issues and processing discrepancies that might influence estimates. Aggregate income estimates with adjustments where possible to account for known conceptual differences are compared. Even allowing for statistical variability, some reconciliation issues remain. These are sometimes are explained by the use of different methodologies or data gathering instruments but they sometimes also remain unexplained.

    Release date: 2010-04-06
  • 69. Methods for oversampling rare subpopulations in social surveys Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X200900211036
    Description:

    Surveys are frequently required to produce estimates for subpopulations, sometimes for a single subpopulation and sometimes for several subpopulations in addition to the total population. When membership of a rare subpopulation (or domain) can be determined from the sampling frame, selecting the required domain sample size is relatively straightforward. In this case the main issue is the extent of oversampling to employ when survey estimates are required for several domains and for the total population. Sampling and oversampling rare domains whose members cannot be identified in advance present a major challenge. A variety of methods has been used in this situation. In addition to large-scale screening, these methods include disproportionate stratified sampling, two-phase sampling, the use of multiple frames, multiplicity sampling, panel surveys, and the use of multi-purpose surveys. This paper illustrates the application of these methods in a range of social surveys.

    Release date: 2009-12-23
  • 70. A standardization of randomized response strategies Archived
    Articles and reports: 12-001-X200900211037
    Description:

    Randomized response strategies, which have originally been developed as statistical methods to reduce nonresponse as well as untruthful answering, can also be applied in the field of statistical disclosure control for public use microdata files. In this paper a standardization of randomized response techniques for the estimation of proportions of identifying or sensitive attributes is presented. The statistical properties of the standardized estimator are derived for general probability sampling. In order to analyse the effect of different choices of the method's implicit "design parameters" on the performance of the estimator we have to include measures of privacy protection in our considerations. These yield variance-optimum design parameters given a certain level of privacy protection. To this end the variables have to be classified into different categories of sensitivity. A real-data example applies the technique in a survey on academic cheating behaviour.

    Release date: 2009-12-23
Reference (1)

Reference (1) ((1 result))

  • 1. Content of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics Part B - Income and Wealth Content Archived
    Surveys and statistical programs – Documentation: 75F0002M1992001
    Description:

    Starting in 1994, the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) will follow individuals and families for at least six years, tracking their labour market experiences, changes in income and family circumstances. An initial proposal for the content of SLID, entitled "Content of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics : Discussion Paper", was distributed in February 1992.

    That paper served as a background document for consultation with and a review by interested users. The content underwent significant change during this process. Based upon the revised content, a large-scale test of SLID will be conducted in February and May 1993.

    The present document outlines the income and wealth content to be tested in May 1993. This document is really a continuation of SLID Research Paper Series 92-01A, which outlines the demographic and labour content used in the January /February 1993 test.

    Release date: 2008-02-29
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