|
Activity Number:
|
478
|
|
Type:
|
Contributed
|
|
Date/Time:
|
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
|
|
Sponsor:
|
Section on Survey Research Methods
|
| Abstract - #304773 |
|
Title:
|
Link-Tracing Sampling: Estimating the Size of a Hidden Population in Presence of Heterogeneous Nomination Probabilities
|
|
Author(s):
|
Martin H. Felix-Medina*+ and Pedro E. Monjardin and Aida Nohemi Aceves-Castro
|
|
Companies:
|
Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa and Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa and Escuela de Ciencias Fisico-Matematicas, Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa
|
|
Address:
|
Escuela de Ciencias Fisico-Matematicas, Culiacan Sinaloa, International, 80040, Mexico
|
|
Keywords:
|
chain-referral sampling ; design-based estimator ; maximum likelihood estimator ; profile likelihood confidence interval ; snowball sampling ; Wald confidence interval
|
|
Abstract:
|
Felix-Medina and Thompson (2004) proposed a variant of link-tracing sampling to sample hidden populations. In their variant, an initial sample of venues is selected and the people found in the sampled venues are asked to nominate other members of the population to be included in the sample. Those authors derived maximum likelihood estimators of the population size under the assumption that the probability that a person is nominated does not depend on the nominee. In this work we extend their research into the case of heterogeneous nomination probabilities and derive maximum likelihood estimators of the population size. In addition, we propose both Wald and profile likelihood confidence intervals for the size of the population. The results of simulations studies carried out by us show that in presence of heterogeneous probabilities the proposed estimators perform reasonably well.
|
