Small-Area Estimation for Business Surveys

• Activity Number: 86
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 1, 2010 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Wesley Yung*+ and Susana Rubin-Bleuer and Sebastien Landry
• Companies: Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada
• Keywords: Small Area Estimation ; Business Surveys ; Variance Components

Abstract

Small area estimation techniques are becoming increasingly used in survey applications to provide estimates for local areas of interest. These techniques combine direct survey estimates with auxiliary data to produce estimates for areas with very few sampled units. Most of the applications have been in social surveys where the areas of interest are geographical regions with fewer applications to business surveys, although tax information is a usually available as auxiliary data. Statistics Canada has been investigating small area estimation for its Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH). Preliminary results have been encouraging but some issues with negative variance component estimates have been noted. In this presentation, alternative methods to estimate the variance components will be investigated and evaluated using a population generated from SEPH data.