Sample Surveys: Design, Methods and Applications

Book excerpt: This new handbook contains the most comprehensive account of sample surveys theory and practice to date. It is a second volume on sample surveys, with the goal of updating and extending the sampling volume published as volume 6 of the Handbook of Statistics in 1988. The present handbook is divided into two volumes (29A and 29B), with a total of 41 chapters, covering current developments in almost every aspect of sample surveys, with references to important contributions and available software. It can serve as a self contained guide to researchers and practitioners, with appropriate balance between theory and real life applications. Each of the two volumes is divided into three parts, with each part preceded by an introduction, summarizing the main developments in the areas covered in that part. Volume 29A deals with methods of sample selection and data processing, with the later including editing and imputation, handling of outliers and measurement errors, and methods of disclosure control. The volume contains also a large variety of applications in specialized areas such as household and business surveys, marketing research, opinion polls and censuses. Volume 29B is concerned with inference, distinguishing between design-based and model-based methods and focusing on specific problems such as small area estimation, analysis of longitudinal data, categorical data analysis and inference on distribution functions. The volume contains also chapters dealing with case-control studies, asymptotic properties of estimators and decision theoretic aspects. - Comprehensive account of recent developments in sample survey theory and practice - Discusses a wide variety of diverse applications - Comprehensive bibliography