Distinguished JPSM Lecture
co-Sponsored by Statistics Consortium
SPEAKER: Professor Roderick J. Little Departments of Biostatistics and Statistics and Institute for
Social Research, University of Michigan
TITLE: Wait! Should We Use the Survey Weights
to Weight?
TIME AND PLACE:
Friday, April 13, 2007, 3:30pm
Room 2205, Lefrak Hall
The lecture will discuss the use of weights in survey inference. A
fundamental idea in survey sampling is to weight cases by the inverse
of their probabilities of inclusion, when deriving survey inferences.
The weight indicates the number of population units the included case
represents, and thus can be seen as a fundamental feature of the
design-based survey inference. Modelers, on the other hand, seem more
ambivalent about weighting, and argue that (at least in some settings)
weighting is unnecessary. Dr. Little will discuss various
perspectives and myths about survey weights. He will argue that, from
a robust Bayesian perspective, weights are a key feature of the data
that cannot be ignored, but weighting may not be the best way to use
them.
Two discussants will speak following Professor Little's talk:
John Eltinge of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Richard Valliant from
JPSM.
