The Relative Statistical and Operational Plausibility of Multiple-Frame Sampling for Rare Population Subgroups

• Activity Number: 315
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): William D. Kalsbeek*+ and Bruce D. Spencer and Carol C. House
• Companies: The University of North Carolina At Chapel Hill and Northwestern University and National Academy of Science
• Keywords: cost-efficiency ; multiple-frame sampling ; sample design

Abstract

For studies where the objective is to estimate the prevalence rate of members of a sampled population who fall in a rare subgroup, this paper examines the relative statistical precision of prevalence estimates from a multiple-frame samples compared to single-frame household samples with the same data collection budget. We first examine relative cost-efficiency for simple un-clustered samples and then consider the effect of cluster sampling. Findings are illustrated for the case where the subgroup consists of victims of rape and sexual assault (RSA) in a civilian non-institutionalized population of persons 12 years and older. Two sample designs are considered: (i) dual-frame sampling from a conventional household frame plus a frame constructed from police reports of RSA, versus (ii) single frame sampling from the household frame. We conclude for this illustration that a dual-frame design will be more cost-effective to the extent that RSA prevalence among police reports exceeds the RSA prevalence in the population as a whole. However, gains in the dual-frame design are diminished in direct relationship to the size of intra-class correlation when cluster sampling is considered.