Assessing Coverage and Accuracy of Population Subgroups using an Address-Based Sample Frame

• Activity Number: 422
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Kelly Dixon*+ and Mike Kwanisai and Al Tupek and Al Tupek
• Companies: Arbitron, Inc. and Arbitron, Inc. and Arbitron, Inc. and Arbitron, Inc.
• Keywords: stratified sampling ; coverage ; accuracy ; misclassification error

Abstract

Arbitron obtains hundreds of thousands of records annually from Survey Sampling International (SSI) for purposes of selecting household samples. The primary information that Arbitron gets from SSI is either a phone number or an address (sample point) and some geographic descriptive information such as county or subcounty. SSI has the ability to provide additional information about the sample points; including such things as name, age and race/ethnicity of the householder, existence of certain persons of certain age group or gender in the household. Achieving a sample of respondents that satisfies demographic and geographic proportionality is one of the main goals for Arbitron, since radio listening does vary by these characteristics. We analyzed the usefulness of the SSI auxiliary information to find Hispanic and young households in order to sample them at a rate that yields a proportional sample. We compared the demographic information from thousands of Arbitron respondents to the SSI frame information. We report the proportion and types of matches and non-matches by household characteristic. We discuss data quality metrics in terms of accuracy and coverage and the importance of each to achieve our survey's goals.