Impact on Weights and Sampling Errors of Using Hybrid Frame and Composite MOS

• Activity Number: 247
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 5, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): John Hall*+ and Mark Denbaly and Pheny Weidman
• Companies: Mathematica Policy Research and Economic Research Service-USDA and Economic Research Service USDA
• Keywords: Low Income Households ; Address Based Sampling ; Composite Size Measures ; Weighting ; Sampling Error ; Food Acquisition

Abstract

The National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) employed two strategies to efficiently oversample households receiving U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and other low income households: (1) composite measures of size (MOS) in a multi-stage sampling design; (2)use of a hybrid sampling frame at the penultimate level of sampling. FoodAPS was fielded in 2012 and collected data from nearly 5,000 households. The sample used a three-stage design, where primary and secondary selection units (PSUs and SSUs) were selected using composite MOS that reflected the projected prevalence of and sampling rate for each of four target groups: SNAP households and three income-defined strata of households not receiving SNAP. Within SSUs the study employed a hybrid frame approach: addresses from SNAP administrative records were merged with addresses from a commercial Address Based Sampling (ABS) frame. The paper will review all phases of sampling: how the composite size measures were constructed; how the two frames were used within SSUs. In addition the paper will attempt to evaluate the impacts of the approach on analysis weights and sampling errors.