Alternative survey sample designs: Sampling with multiple overlapping frames - ARCHIVED

Articles and reports: 12-001-X201100211608

Description:

Designs and estimators for the single frame surveys currently used by U.S. government agencies were developed in response to practical problems. Federal household surveys now face challenges of decreasing response rates and frame coverage, higher data collection costs, and increasing demand for small area statistics. Multiple frame surveys, in which independent samples are drawn from separate frames, can be used to help meet some of these challenges. Examples include combining a list frame with an area frame or using two frames to sample landline telephone households and cellular telephone households. We review point estimators and weight adjustments that can be used to analyze multiple frame surveys with standard survey software, and summarize construction of replicate weights for variance estimation. Because of their increased complexity, multiple frame surveys face some challenges not found in single frame surveys. We investigate misclassification bias in multiple frame surveys, and propose a method for correcting for this bias when misclassification probabilities are known. Finally, we discuss research that is needed on nonsampling errors with multiple frame surveys.

Issue Number: 2011002
Author(s): Lohr, Sharon

Main Product: Survey Methodology

FormatRelease dateMore information
PDFDecember 21, 2011