[R] Complex sample variances

[Thomas Lumley]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Fred Rohde wrote:

> Thanks.  I'll update the survey package.  Sudaan does the standard
> errors on quantiles using Taylor series.  If I can hunt down the formula
> it uses, could you add that to svyquantile?

If I can bring myself to believe it.  Computing standard errors for the
normal approximation to the median is not easy even in simple random
samples.

	-thomas


> Fred
>
> Thomas Lumley <tlumley at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Fred Rohde wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > Is there a way to get complex sample variances in the survey package on
> > summary statistics other than means? If not, can they be added to a
> > future version? It would be be great to have them on totals, quantiles,
> > ratios, and tables (eg row percent, columns percent, etc).
> >
>
> svytotal() and svyratio() will do this for totals and ratios if you have a
> new enough version. At the moment the easiest way to get row or column
> percentages is to think of them them as ratios of means of binary
> variables and use svyratio().
>
> Quantiles are more difficult, since neither Taylor series nor jackknife
> approaches work.
>
> -thomas
>
>
> ---------------------------------

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle