Effect of auxiliary information in data collection and estimation stage

Abstract

Responsive design is a newly emerged view focusing on reducing the effects of non-response by monitoring and intervening the data collection process. Informative measures that use auxiliary information are used to guide the data collection process. Aspiration to a well representative set of respondents is currently done through balancing – means of auxiliary variables have to be equal in the sample and the set of respondents. Auxiliary variables are later used in the estimation stage to improve the estimates, but assume that more auxiliary variables are available in the estimation stage. The auxiliary vector is split by variables (a) used in monitoring and estimation, and (b) only used in the estimation stage. Explicit terms of calibration weights and response propensities are developed and useful properties of those terms are proved. Theoretical results and two emerging strategies are tested in simulations.