Research Reports

A partition model for analyzing categorical data subject to non-ignorable non-response

Ryan Janicki, Donald Malec

ABSTRACT

In many surveys, the goal is to estimate the proportion of the population within different domains with a certain characteristic of interest. This estimation problem is often complicated by survey non-response and the difficulty in modeling the non-response mechanism. In this paper we develop a new method for analyzing categorical data with non-response when there is uncertainty about ignorability, which incorporates the idea that there are many a priori plausible ignorable and non-ignorable models. We consider saturated submodels of the full model, which may have a mixture of ignorable and non-ignorable components, and use Bayesian averaging to incorporate model uncertainty. This method is illustrated using data from the 2000 Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation Survey. A simulation study is used to evaluate the performance of the model and to compare the partition model to other popular non-ignorable Bayesian models.

CITATION:

Ryan Janicki, Donald Malec. (2011). A partition model for analyzing categorical data subject to non-ignorable non-response. Center for Statistical Research & Methodology, Research and Methodology Directorate Research Report Series (Statistics #2011-03). U.S. Census Bureau. Available online at <http://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/rrs2011-03.pdf>.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Statistical Research & Methodology, Research and Methodology Directorate

Published online: March 17, 2011
Last revised: March 17, 2011