The National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle IV, evaluation of linked design
Waksberg, J.; Sperry, S.; Judkins, D.; Smith, V.
Vital and Health Statistics. Series 2 Data Evaluation and Methods Research 1993(117): 1-20
1993
ISSN/ISBN: 0083-2057 PMID: 8212600 Document Number: 338259
This article describes the research methodology used in Cycle IV of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The NSFG used a subsample of women living in households that participated in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), which is a continuous survey in 198 metropolitan areas and clusters of nonmetropolitan counties in the United States. Chapter 1 is devoted to a description of the sampling design and subsampling design, respectively, of the NHIS and NSFG. An intensive follow-up was conducted among a 50% subsample of nonresponse cases. Chapter 2 covers a discussion of the application of "balanced repeated replications," which was the technique used to estimate within-unit variance and within-segment variance. In general the between-segment variance was small for most estimates. There was a 7% between-primary-sampling-unit (PSU) variance for all races combined and an 11% between-PSU variance for Black women. Chapter 3 includes a presentation of a theoretical model of the variance of a ratio-adjusted estimate. The effects of variation in weights is discussed. A fitted model for design effects was compared to a direct design effects model. The aim of examining design effects was to provide a comparison of NSFG and NHIS linked and unlinked designs. Chapter 4 considers four designs which vary in the number of PSUs, the number of segments, the number of designated households, the number of designated women from those households, and the number of interviewed women. The design effect of oversampling of strata with a high proportion of Blacks was calculated. The number of women that would have to be interviewed was calculated in an unlinked design in order to attain the same precision comparable to a linked Cycle IV design. Chapter 5 gives the direct costs for each of the four design options for 10 activities in data collection.