[R] R survey package again

[James Reilly]

On 7/9/07 11:42 PM, eugen pircalabelu wrote:
 >   I have a sample from a survey where household were interviewed. The 
sample has 4 criteria on which the stratification was based: REGION, 
SIZE OF HOUSEHOLD, SIZE OF LOCALITY, AGE OF HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD. Since i 
don't have the whole information in each cell of the cross 
region*sizehh*sizeloc*age i can't use the postStratify function from 
Survey package. Is that correct? (I think so but i need a competent answer)
 >
 >   The only additional info that i have is the size of a cell from a 
2*2 crossing (eg: I know the population size for all the strata defined 
by region*sizehh, region*sizeloc, sizeloc*age........) so i have the 
behaviour of the population but in a 2 by 2 cross for each of these 
criteria.


You're right, poststratification can't work from two-way marginal 
distributions, but raking or calibration can.

However it seems odd that you only have this much information, since the 
full joint distribution would have been needed for stratification. 
Usually these details would be documented as part of the sample design. 
Can you get this information from those responsible for the sample 
design? It would also be good to check your understanding of the design. 
A sampling frame listing details of household size and age of household 
head would have been needed to do the four-way stratification you 
mention, but in my experience such frames aren't very common.

James
-- 
James Reilly
Department of Statistics, University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand