Recent years have seen an increased demand for sampling methods which permit simple computations of means and variances. For efficient designs the calculation of variances though theoretically possible may be difficult enough that busy statisticians omit to do it, and so a basic advantage of probability sampling is lost. A practical method for the simple treatment of cluster designs with slight loss of efficiency has been devised by Deming; it involves an ingenious arrangement of the population in such fashion that both the sampling units and the strata in which they are grouped are effectively equal in size, so that equal weights are appropriate for estimating both totals and variances. The present paper describes a simplification in the different direction of restricting selection to two units from each stratum. To the extent that this involves some sacrifice of efficiency we recall that the decision on which sampling method to use ought to take account of simplicity of calculation of mean and variance as well as of efficiency.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Nathan Keyfitz (1957) studied this question.