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315 – Sampling Strategies for Rare and Hard-to-Reach Populations
Variance Estimation of the Design Effect
Alberto Padilla
Sample size determination is a crucial part of the planning process of a survey and it can be accomplished in different ways, some of them require information not available or that may be obtained with a substantial cost. Sample size calculation can be done by using the design effect estimator proposed by Kish. This estimator is also used as an efficiency measure for a probability sampling plan and to build confidence intervals. Even though the design effect estimator is widely used in practice, little is known about its statistical properties and there are no variance estimators available. In this paper we propose a method to estimate the variance. With this estimator it is possible to assess the precision of the estimators during the planning stage of a survey. An example using stratified sampling is given.