A Modified Proportional Allocation Sampling Method for the Study of Respirator Use and Practices in U.S. Private Industries

• Activity Number: 241 - SPEED: Statistics in Social Sciences and Survey Research Part 1
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Danny Friel* and Michelle Myers and Dee Zamora and Xingyou Zhang and Katherine N. Yoon and Megan Casey and Emily J. Haas
• Companies: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Keywords: data linkage; oversampling; sample design; stratification; proportional allocation

Abstract

Last conducted in 2001, a national survey of respirator use and practices will provide crucial data to inform NIOSH’s Respirator Approval Program priorities. To prepare for a second national survey, NIOSH and BLS collaborated to develop a modified proportional allocation method to effectively sample and study industries with occupations that tend to use personal protective equipment (PPE), including respirators.

As an extension of simple proportional allocation based on the distribution of respondents to the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) across 100 industry-employment size strata, the method uses a modified target stratum size to oversample establishments from strata expected to have high rates of PPE use. The modified target stratum size draws on 1) occupations identified as likely to use PPE based on data from the Occupational Information Network, 2) the incidence of occupations with likely PPE use in Occupational Requirements Survey samples, and 3) the sampling frame size (number of SOII respondents) for each stratum.