Properties of the weighting cell estimator under a nonparametric response mechanism

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Damião Nóbrega da
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Outros Autores: Opsomer, Jean D.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRN
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/26222
• topic: Finite population asymptotics; Quasi-randomization inference; Weighting cell selection

The weighting cell estimator corrects for unit nonresponse by dividing the sample into homogeneous groups (cells) and applying a ratio correction to the respondents within each cell. Previous studies of the statistical properties of weighting cell estimators have assumed that these cells correspond to known population cells with homogeneous characteristics. In this article, we study the properties of the weighting cell estimator under a response probability model that does not require correct specification of homogeneous population cells. Instead, we assume that the response probabilities are a smooth but otherwise unspecified function of a known auxiliary variable. Under this more general model, we study the robustness of the weighting cell estimator against model misspecification. We show that, even when the population cells are unknown, the estimator is consistent with respect to the sampling design and the response model. We describe the effect of the number of weighting cells on the asymptotic properties of the estimator. Simulation experiments explore the finite sample properties of the estimator. We conclude with some guidance on how to select the size and number of cells for practical implementation of weighting cell estimation when those cells cannot be specified a priori.