A problem often faced by statisticians  at the planning stage of a survey, is how to decide about which sample strategy to implement. If auxiliary information is available, the statistician might, for example, consider using sampling with probabilities proportional to some size variable, or, stratified sampling. Which one will be more efficient?

To help with this problem, Edgar Bueno has created an application for making the decision through simulations assisted by two models. The first one, called working model, reflects the “knowledge” or beliefs the statistician has about the relation between the auxiliary variable and the variable of interest. This model, however, might be misspecified. This possibility is reflected on the second model, called true model. In this way, the Application allows for determining which sampling strategy is more efficient if a given working model is used when in reality the population is generated by a different model.

Find our more about Edgar Bueno's research:

“A comparison of stratified simple random sampling and probability proportional-to-size sampling”