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All (732)

All (732) (0 to 10 of 732 results)

1. Survey Methodology
Journals and periodicals: 12-001-X
Geography: Canada
Description:
The journal publishes articles dealing with various aspects of statistical development relevant to a statistical agency, such as design issues in the context of practical constraints, use of different data sources and collection techniques, total survey error, survey evaluation, research in survey methodology, time series analysis, seasonal adjustment, demographic studies, data integration, estimation and data analysis methods, and general survey systems development. The emphasis is placed on the development and evaluation of specific methodologies as applied to data collection or the data themselves.
Release date: 2020-06-30
2. Are probability surveys bound to disappear for the production of official statistics?
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100001
Description:
For several decades, national statistical agencies around the world have been using probability surveys as their preferred tool to meet information needs about a population of interest. In the last few years, there has been a wind of change and other data sources are being increasingly explored. Five key factors are behind this trend: the decline in response rates in probability surveys, the high cost of data collection, the increased burden on respondents, the desire for access to “real-time” statistics, and the proliferation of non-probability data sources. Some people have even come to believe that probability surveys could gradually disappear. In this article, we review some approaches that can reduce, or even eliminate, the use of probability surveys, all the while preserving a valid statistical inference framework. All the approaches we consider use data from a non-probability source; data from a probability survey are also used in most cases. Some of these approaches rely on the validity of model assumptions, which contrasts with approaches based on the probability sampling design. These design-based approaches are generally not as efficient; yet, they are not subject to the risk of bias due to model misspecification.
Release date: 2020-06-30
3. 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
4. Model-assisted sample design is minimax for model-based prediction
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100003
Description:
Probability sampling designs are sometimes used in conjunction with model-based predictors of finite population quantities. These designs should minimize the anticipated variance (AV), which is the variance over both the superpopulation and sampling processes, of the predictor of interest. The AV-optimal design is well known for model-assisted estimators which attain the Godambe-Joshi lower bound for the AV of design-unbiased estimators. However, no optimal probability designs have been found for model-based prediction, except under conditions such that the model-based and model-assisted estimators coincide; these cases can be limiting. This paper shows that the Godambe-Joshi lower bound is an upper bound for the AV of the best linear unbiased estimator of a population total, where the upper bound is over the space of all covariate sets. Therefore model-assisted optimal designs are a sensible choice for model-based prediction when there is uncertainty about the form of the final model, as there often would be prior to conducting the survey. Simulations confirm the result over a range of scenarios, including when the relationship between the target and auxiliary variables is nonlinear and modeled using splines. The AV is lowest relative to the bound when an important design variable is not associated with the target variable.
Release date: 2020-06-30
5. Small area estimation methods under cut-off sampling
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100004
Description:
Cut-off sampling is applied when there is a subset of units from the population from which getting the required information is too expensive or difficult and, therefore, those units are deliberately excluded from sample selection. If those excluded units are different from the sampled ones in the characteristics of interest, naïve estimators may be severely biased. Calibration estimators have been proposed to reduce the design-bias. However, when estimating in small domains, they can be inefficient even in the absence of cut-off sampling. Model-based small area estimation methods may prove useful for reducing the bias due to cut-off sampling if the assumed model holds for the whole population. At the same time, for small domains, these methods provide more efficient estimators than calibration methods. Since model-based properties are obtained assuming that the model holds but no model is exactly true, here we analyze the design properties of calibration and model-based procedures for estimation of small domain characteristics under cut-off sampling. Our results confirm that model-based estimators reduce the bias due to cut-off sampling and perform significantly better in terms of design mean squared error.
Release date: 2020-06-30
6. 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
7. A new double hot-deck imputation method for missing values under boundary conditions
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100006
Description:
In surveys, logical boundaries among variables or among waves of surveys make imputation of missing values complicated. We propose a new regression-based multiple imputation method to deal with survey nonresponses with two-sided logical boundaries. This imputation method automatically satisfies the boundary conditions without an additional acceptance/rejection procedure and utilizes the boundary information to derive an imputed value and to determine the suitability of the imputed value. Simulation results show that our new imputation method outperforms the existing imputation methods for both mean and quantile estimations regardless of missing rates, error distributions, and missing-mechanisms. We apply our method to impute the self-reported variable “years of smoking” in successive health screenings of Koreans.
Release date: 2020-06-30
8. 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
9. A note on propensity score weighting method using paradata in survey sampling
Articles and reports: 12-001-X201900300002
Description:
Paradata is often collected during the survey process to monitor the quality of the survey response. One such paradata is a respondent behavior, which can be used to construct response models. The propensity score weight using the respondent behavior information can be applied to the final analysis to reduce the nonresponse bias. However, including the surrogate variable in the propensity score weighting does not always guarantee the efficiency gain. We show that the surrogate variable is useful only when it is correlated with the study variable. Results from a limited simulation study confirm the finding. A real data application using the Korean Workplace Panel Survey data is also presented.
Release date: 2019-12-17
10. On a new estimator for the variance of the ratio estimator with small sample corrections
Articles and reports: 12-001-X201900300003
Description:
The widely used formulas for the variance of the ratio estimator may lead to serious underestimates when the sample size is small; see Sukhatme (1954), Koop (1968), Rao (1969), and Cochran (1977, pages 163-164). In order to solve this classical problem, we propose in this paper new estimators for the variance and the mean square error of the ratio estimator that do not suffer from such a large negative bias. Similar estimation formulas can be derived for alternative ratio estimators as discussed in Tin (1965). We compare three mean square error estimators for the ratio estimator in a simulation study.
Release date: 2019-12-17

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Articles and reports (728)

Articles and reports (728) (0 to 10 of 728 results)

1. Are probability surveys bound to disappear for the production of official statistics?
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100001
Description:
For several decades, national statistical agencies around the world have been using probability surveys as their preferred tool to meet information needs about a population of interest. In the last few years, there has been a wind of change and other data sources are being increasingly explored. Five key factors are behind this trend: the decline in response rates in probability surveys, the high cost of data collection, the increased burden on respondents, the desire for access to “real-time” statistics, and the proliferation of non-probability data sources. Some people have even come to believe that probability surveys could gradually disappear. In this article, we review some approaches that can reduce, or even eliminate, the use of probability surveys, all the while preserving a valid statistical inference framework. All the approaches we consider use data from a non-probability source; data from a probability survey are also used in most cases. Some of these approaches rely on the validity of model assumptions, which contrasts with approaches based on the probability sampling design. These design-based approaches are generally not as efficient; yet, they are not subject to the risk of bias due to model misspecification.
Release date: 2020-06-30
2. 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
3. Model-assisted sample design is minimax for model-based prediction
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100003
Description:
Probability sampling designs are sometimes used in conjunction with model-based predictors of finite population quantities. These designs should minimize the anticipated variance (AV), which is the variance over both the superpopulation and sampling processes, of the predictor of interest. The AV-optimal design is well known for model-assisted estimators which attain the Godambe-Joshi lower bound for the AV of design-unbiased estimators. However, no optimal probability designs have been found for model-based prediction, except under conditions such that the model-based and model-assisted estimators coincide; these cases can be limiting. This paper shows that the Godambe-Joshi lower bound is an upper bound for the AV of the best linear unbiased estimator of a population total, where the upper bound is over the space of all covariate sets. Therefore model-assisted optimal designs are a sensible choice for model-based prediction when there is uncertainty about the form of the final model, as there often would be prior to conducting the survey. Simulations confirm the result over a range of scenarios, including when the relationship between the target and auxiliary variables is nonlinear and modeled using splines. The AV is lowest relative to the bound when an important design variable is not associated with the target variable.
Release date: 2020-06-30
4. Small area estimation methods under cut-off sampling
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100004
Description:
Cut-off sampling is applied when there is a subset of units from the population from which getting the required information is too expensive or difficult and, therefore, those units are deliberately excluded from sample selection. If those excluded units are different from the sampled ones in the characteristics of interest, naïve estimators may be severely biased. Calibration estimators have been proposed to reduce the design-bias. However, when estimating in small domains, they can be inefficient even in the absence of cut-off sampling. Model-based small area estimation methods may prove useful for reducing the bias due to cut-off sampling if the assumed model holds for the whole population. At the same time, for small domains, these methods provide more efficient estimators than calibration methods. Since model-based properties are obtained assuming that the model holds but no model is exactly true, here we analyze the design properties of calibration and model-based procedures for estimation of small domain characteristics under cut-off sampling. Our results confirm that model-based estimators reduce the bias due to cut-off sampling and perform significantly better in terms of design mean squared error.
Release date: 2020-06-30
5. 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
6. A new double hot-deck imputation method for missing values under boundary conditions
Articles and reports: 12-001-X202000100006
Description:
In surveys, logical boundaries among variables or among waves of surveys make imputation of missing values complicated. We propose a new regression-based multiple imputation method to deal with survey nonresponses with two-sided logical boundaries. This imputation method automatically satisfies the boundary conditions without an additional acceptance/rejection procedure and utilizes the boundary information to derive an imputed value and to determine the suitability of the imputed value. Simulation results show that our new imputation method outperforms the existing imputation methods for both mean and quantile estimations regardless of missing rates, error distributions, and missing-mechanisms. We apply our method to impute the self-reported variable “years of smoking” in successive health screenings of Koreans.
Release date: 2020-06-30
7. 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
8. A note on propensity score weighting method using paradata in survey sampling
Articles and reports: 12-001-X201900300002
Description:
Paradata is often collected during the survey process to monitor the quality of the survey response. One such paradata is a respondent behavior, which can be used to construct response models. The propensity score weight using the respondent behavior information can be applied to the final analysis to reduce the nonresponse bias. However, including the surrogate variable in the propensity score weighting does not always guarantee the efficiency gain. We show that the surrogate variable is useful only when it is correlated with the study variable. Results from a limited simulation study confirm the finding. A real data application using the Korean Workplace Panel Survey data is also presented.
Release date: 2019-12-17
9. On a new estimator for the variance of the ratio estimator with small sample corrections
Articles and reports: 12-001-X201900300003
Description:
The widely used formulas for the variance of the ratio estimator may lead to serious underestimates when the sample size is small; see Sukhatme (1954), Koop (1968), Rao (1969), and Cochran (1977, pages 163-164). In order to solve this classical problem, we propose in this paper new estimators for the variance and the mean square error of the ratio estimator that do not suffer from such a large negative bias. Similar estimation formulas can be derived for alternative ratio estimators as discussed in Tin (1965). We compare three mean square error estimators for the ratio estimator in a simulation study.
Release date: 2019-12-17
10. Cost optimal sampling for the integrated observation of different populations
Articles and reports: 12-001-X201900300004
Description:
Social or economic studies often need to have a global view of society. For example, in agricultural studies, the characteristics of farms can be linked to the social activities of individuals. Hence, studies of a given phenomenon should be done by considering variables of interest referring to different target populations that are related to each other. In order to get an insight into an underlying phenomenon, the observations must be carried out in an integrated way, in which the units of a given population have to be observed jointly with related units of the other population. In the agricultural example, this means that a sample of rural households should be selected that have some relationship with the farm sample to be used for the study. There are several ways to select integrated samples. This paper studies the problem of defining an optimal sampling strategy for this situation: the solution proposed minimizes the sampling cost, ensuring a predefined estimation precision for the variables of interest (of either one or both populations) describing the phenomenon. Indirect sampling provides a natural framework for this setting since the units belonging to a population can become carriers of information on another population that is the object of a given survey. The problem is studied for different contexts which characterize the information concerning the links available in the sampling design phase, ranging from situations in which the links among the different units are known in the design phase to a situation in which the available information on links is very poor. An empirical study of agricultural data for a developing country is presented. It shows how controlling the inclusion probabilities at the design phase using the available information (namely the links) is effective, can significantly reduce the errors of the estimates for the indirectly observed population. The need for good models for predicting the unknown variables or the links is also demonstrated.
Release date: 2019-12-17

Journals and periodicals (4)

Journals and periodicals (4) ((4 results))

1. Survey Methodology
Journals and periodicals: 12-001-X
Geography: Canada
Description:
The journal publishes articles dealing with various aspects of statistical development relevant to a statistical agency, such as design issues in the context of practical constraints, use of different data sources and collection techniques, total survey error, survey evaluation, research in survey methodology, time series analysis, seasonal adjustment, demographic studies, data integration, estimation and data analysis methods, and general survey systems development. The emphasis is placed on the development and evaluation of specific methodologies as applied to data collection or the data themselves.
Release date: 2020-06-30
2. Canadian Social Trends
Journals and periodicals: 11-008-X
Geography: Canada
Description:
This publication discusses the social, economic, and demographic changes affecting the lives of Canadians.
Free downloadable PDF and HTML files: Published every six weeksPrinted issue: Published every six months (twice per year)
Release date: 2012-07-30
3. Canadian Economic Observer
Journals and periodicals: 11-010-X
Geography: Canada
Description:
This monthly periodical is Statistics Canada's flagship publication for economic statistics. Each issue contains a monthly summary of the economy, major economic events and a feature article. A statistical summary contains a wide range of tables and graphs on the principal economic indicators for Canada, the provinces and the major industrial nations. A historical listing of this same data is contained in the Canadian economic observer: historical supplement (Catalogue no. 11-210-XPB and XIB).
Release date: 2012-06-15
4. Travel-log (Touriscope) Archived
Journals and periodicals: 87-003-X
Geography: Canada
Description:
Travel-log is a quarterly tourism newsletter that examines international travel trends, international travel accounts and the travel price index. It also features the latest tourism indicators and includes feature articles related to tourism.
Release date: 2005-01-26

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Date modified:: 2020-12-03