Journal of Electoral Studies

Issues

Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 A Comparative Analysis of Weighting Approaches for Dual-Frame Telephone Surveys

A Comparative Analysis of Weighting Approaches for Dual-Frame Telephone Surveys

Pei-chun Hou
2023 / 05
Volume 30, No.1

pp.43-88
10.6612/tjes.202305_30(1).0002
Paper

Appendix

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of IT and the changing times, Taiwan has been facing increasing coverage error in single-frame telephone surveys (whether by landline or cell phone) in recent years. Dual-frame telephone surveys can effectively reduce this deficiency. However, there is still no consensus on how to weight dualframe telephone samples in Taiwan.
This study uses data from a 2020 dual-frame telephone survey to compare several popular weighting approaches. The impact of these approaches on the variance and bias in both single-frame and dual-frame samples, as well as in overlap and screener designs, is discussed. Additionally, this study examines the differences between the estimates of the non-proportion dual-frame sample allocation to provide practical recommendations.
The results indicate the following: (1) if the sample allocation of the dualframe samples is in nearly equal proportions, minor differences occur in the weighting loss between the overlap and screener designs. Only the post-stratified estimating procedure reveals some differences in the estimates with other designs. (2) If the sample allocation of the dual-frame samples is in unequal proportions, such as one single-frame national sample and the others are only 1/3 or 1/2 of the former, then after calibration, the weighting loss is only slightly increased, and these approaches produce only tiny differences in the calibrated estimates between the combinations.

Keywords

dual-frame telephone surveys

weighting

design effect

weighting loss

bias