Survey Sampling Theory and Methods Second Edition

Abstract

It is gratifying that our Publishers engaged us to prepare this second edition. Since our first edition appeared in 1992, Survey Sampling acquired a remarkable growth to which we, too, have made a modest contribution. So, some addition seems due. Meanwhile, we have received feedback from our readers that prompts us to incorporate some modifications. Several significant books of relevance have emerged after our write-up for the first edition went to press that we may now draw upon, by the following authors or editors: SARNDAL ¨ , SWENSSON and WRETMAN (1992), BOLFARINE and ZACKS (1992), S. K. THOMPSON (1992), GHOSH and MEEDEN (1986), THOMPSON and SEBER (1996), M. E. THOMPSON, (1997) GODAMBE (1991), COX (1991) and VALLIANT, DORFMAN and ROYALL (2000), among others. Numerous path-breaking research articles have also appeared in journals keeping pace with this phenomenal progress. So, we are blessed with an opportunity to enlighten ourselves with plenty of new ideas. Yet we curb our impulse to cover the salient aspects of even a sizeable section of this current literature. This is because we are not inclined to reshape xv © 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC xvi Preface to the Second Edition the essential structure of our original volume and we are aware of the limitations that prevent us from such a venture. As in our earlier presentation, herein we also avoid being dogmatic—more precisely, we eschew taking sides. Survey Sampling is at the periphery of mainstream statistics. The speciality here is that we have a tangible collection of objects with certain features, and there is an intention to pry into them by getting hold of some of these objects and attempting an inference about those left untouched. This inference is traditionally based on a theory of probability that is used to exploit a possible link of the observed with the unobserved. This probability is not conceived as in statistics, covering other fields, to characterize the interrelation of the individual values of the variables of our interest. But this is created by a survey sampling investigator through arbitrary specification of an artifice to select the samples from the populations of objects with preassigned probabilities. This is motivated by a desire to draw a representative sample, which is a concept