Practical Tools for Designing and Weighting Survey Samples

Richard Valliant is a Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan and at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and has been an associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Official Statistics, and Survey Methodology. Jill A. Dever is a Senior Research Statistician at RTI International in Washington, D.C. where she works on a variety of surveys related to health care and education. Her current research interests include software for optimizing complex sample designs, variance estimation using calibrated analysis weights, and methods to evaluate the utility of non-probability sampling. Frauke Kreuter is an Associate Professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, USA; Professor of Statistics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany; and head of the Statistical Methods Research Department at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nürnberg, Germany. Currently she is associate editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of Official Statistics, Sociological Methods and Research, Survey Research Methods, and the Stata Journal.

"The book is very helpful for researchers, practitioners and all people designing a survey in practice ... . The parts at the planning stage of a survey and the important quality control steps are often not mentioned in other textbooks. The abundance of examples helps the reader to understand the whole process. Thus, I can highly recommend this book." (Siegfried Gabler, Mda Methods, data, analyses, Vol. 9 (1), 2015) "This is an invaluable reference to the design, implementation, data processing (including weight adjustments), and analysis of population surveys, and quality control and documentation of these processes. The book has a distinctly practical orientation, combining theory and textbook-like material with examples from ... population surveys and advice and insight that usually cannot be found in the literature. It extensively uses R packages, SAS macros, and other software. Most chapters are concluded with exercises." (Nicholas T. Longford, Mathematical Reviews, April, 2014) "The book is aimed at providing practical aspects of applying sampling and weighting approaches in surveys. It addresses to students as well as to survey and social scientists with basic knowledge of sampling methods. ... supportive exercises are provided in each chapter with solutions given in the appendix." (Iris Burkholder, zbMATH, Vol. 1282, 2014)

• Designing Single-stage Sample Surveys.- Multistage Designs.- Survey Weights and Analyses.- Other Topics.- Appendices.