Practical Methods for Design and Analysis of Complex Surveys
Chapter One
Introduction
General Outline
This book deals with sample surveys that can be conceptually divided into two broad
categories. In descriptive surveys, certain, usually few, population characteristics
need to be precisely and efficiently estimated. For example, in a business survey,
the average salaries for different occupational groups are to be estimated on the
basis of a sample of business establishments. Statistical efficiency of the sampling
design is of great importance. Stratification and other means of using auxiliary
information, such as the sizes of the establishments, can be beneficial in sampling
and estimation with respect to efficiency. Inference indescriptive surveys concerns
exclusively a fixed population, although superpopulation and other models are
often used in the estimation.
Analytical surveys, on the other hand, are often multi-purpose so that a variety
of subject matters are covered. In the ... read full excerpt from Practical Methods for Design and Analysis of Complex Surveys, 2nd Edition ebook
