An Improved Method of Estimating the Correlated Response Variance

Hansen, Hurwitz and Bershad [3] have provided an estimator for the correlated response variance based on the interpenetration of a sample of interviewers' assignments. This article provides a second estimator of the correlated response variance based on the work of all interviewers (those working on interpenetrated assignments as well as the other interviewers). Under certain specified conditions the two estimators are uncorrelated so that an appropriate linear combination of them is an estimator with smaller variance than the Hansen, Hurwitz and Bershad estimator. Both estimators are unbiased and based on the same field experiment so that the reduction in the variance through their joint use incurs only the cost of computation.