The construction of stratified designs in R with the package stratification

摘要

This paper introduces a R-package for the stratification of a survey population using a univariate stratification variable A" and for the calculation of stratum sample sizes. Non iterative methods such as the cumulative root frequency method and the geometric stratum boundaries are implemented. Optimal designs, with stratum boundaries that minimize either the CV of the simple expansion estimator for a fixed sample size n or the n value for a fixed CV can be constructed. Two iterative algorithms are available to find the optimal stratum boundaries. The design can feature a user defined certainty stratum where all the units are sampled. Take-all and take-none strata can be included in the stratified design as they might lead to smaller sample sizes. The sample size calculations are based on the anticipated moments of the survey variable Y, given the stratification variable X. The package handles conditional distributions of Y given X that are either a heteroscedastic linear model, or a log-linear model. Stratum specific non-response can be accounted for in the design construction and in the sample size calculations.