Two-Stage Negative Adaptive Cluster Sampling

Abstract

If the population is rare and clustered, then simple random sampling gives a poor estimate of the population total. For such type of populations, adaptive cluster sampling is useful. But it loses control on the final sample size. Hence, the cost of sampling increases substantially. To overcome this problem, the surveyors often use auxiliary information which is easy to obtain and inexpensive. An attempt is made through the auxiliary information to control the final sample size. In this article, we have proposed two-stage negative adaptive cluster sampling design. It is a new design, which is a combination of two-stage sampling and negative adaptive cluster sampling designs. In this design, we consider an auxiliary variable which is highly negatively correlated with the variable of interest and auxiliary information is completely known. In the first stage of this design, an initial random sample is drawn by using the auxiliary information. Further, using Thompson’s (J Am Stat Assoc 85:1050–1059, 1990) adaptive procedure networks in the population are discovered. These networks serve as the primary-stage units (PSUs). In the second stage, random samples of unequal sizes are drawn from the PSUs to get the secondary-stage units (SSUs). The values of the auxiliary variable and the variable of interest are recorded for these SSUs. Regression estimator is proposed to estimate the population total of the variable of interest. A new estimator, Composite Horwitz–Thompson (CHT)-type estimator, is also proposed. It is based on only the information on the variable of interest. Variances of the above two estimators along with their unbiased estimators are derived. Using this proposed methodology, sample survey was conducted at Western Ghat of Maharashtra, India. The comparison of the performance of these estimators and methodology is presented and compared with other existing methods. The cost–benefit analysis is given.