Primary Sampling Units (PSUs)

When you have clusters, or primary sampling units (PSUs), in your sample design, the procedure estimates variance from the variation among PSUs when the Taylor series variance method is used. See the section Variance and Standard Error of the Mean and the section Variance and Standard Deviation of the Total for more information.

BRR or jackknife variance estimation methods draw multiple replicates (or subsamples) from the full sample by following a specific resampling scheme. These subsamples are constructed by deleting PSUs from the full sample.

If you use a REPWEIGHTS statement to provide replicate weights for BRR or jackknife variance estimation, you do not need to specify a CLUSTER statement. Otherwise, you should specify a CLUSTER statement whenever your design includes clustering at the first stage of sampling. If you do not specify a CLUSTER statement, then PROC SURVEYMEANS  treats each observation as a PSU.