Adjusting Sampling and Weighting to Account for Births and Deaths

• Activity Number: 478
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 5, 2009 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Lawrence R. Ernst*+ and Randall K. Powers and Andy Sandler and Dave Slack
• Companies: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Keywords: sampling frame ; continuing units ; modified frame ; probability proportional to size sampling

Abstract

In a single-stage sample where the units report on multiple occasions, it is typical for some units to drop out of the sampling frame over time or at least drop out of sample (the deaths); for new units to be added to the frame (the births); while the remaining units stay in the original frame and, if selected, in sample. In this paper, we discuss an approach to adding sample units from the frame of continuing and birth units to compensate for the deaths, and reweighting the modified sample so that it results in unbiased estimates in the sense that the expected weight of each unit in the modified frame over all possible samples is 1. Possible applications, including sample augmentation of the first-stage sample of the Producer Price Index, are discussed, as are alternative sampling procedures that focus on converting the augmented sampling process to the selection of a single PPS sample.