The SURVEYSELECT Procedure |
Optimal Allocation
When you specify the ALLOC=OPTIMAL option, PROC SURVEYSELECT allocates the total sample size among the strata in proportion to stratum sizes, stratum costs, and stratum variances. Optimal allocation minimizes the overall variance for a specified cost, or equivalently minimizes the overall cost for a specified variance. See Lohr (1999), Cochran (1977) and Kish (1965) for details. For optimal allocation, the proportion of the total sample size for stratum
is computed as
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![](images/statug_surveyselect0115.png) |
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where
is the number of sampling units in stratum
,
is the standard deviation within stratum
,
is the unit cost within stratum
, and
is the total number of strata. The target sample size for stratum
is
, where
is the total sample size. As for proportional allocation, the values of
are converted to integer sample sizes
by using a rounding algorithm that requires the sum of the stratum sample sizes to equal
. The final sample sizes
are also required to be at least 1, and the final sample sizes must not exceed the stratum sizes for without-replacement selection methods.