Bayesian Spatial Change of Support for Count-Valued Survey Data With Application to the American Community Survey

Jonathan R. Bradley, Christopher K. Wikle and Scott H. Holan

Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2016, vol. 111, issue 514, 472-487

Abstract: We introduce Bayesian spatial change of support (COS) methodology for count-valued survey data with known survey variances. Our proposed methodology is motivated by the American Community Survey (ACS), an ongoing survey administered by the U.S. Census Bureau that provides timely information on several key demographic variables. Specifically, the ACS produces 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year “period-estimates,” and corresponding margins of errors, for published demographic and socio-economic variables recorded over predefined geographies within the United States. Despite the availability of these predefined geographies, it is often of interest to data-users to specify customized user-defined spatial supports. In particular, it is useful to estimate demographic variables defined on “new” spatial supports in “real-time.” This problem is known as spatial COS, which is typically performed under the assumption that the data follow a Gaussian distribution. However, count-valued survey data is naturally non-Gaussian and, hence, we consider modeling these data using a Poisson distribution. Additionally, survey-data are often accompanied by estimates of error, which we incorporate into our analysis. We interpret Poisson count-valued data in small areas as an aggregation of events from a spatial point process. This approach provides us with the flexibility necessary to allow ACS users to consider a variety of spatial supports in “real-time.” We show the effectiveness of our approach through a simulated example as well as through an analysis using public-use ACS data.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01621459.2015.1117471 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jnlasa:v:111:y:2016:i:514:p:472-487

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/UASA20

DOI: 10.1080/01621459.2015.1117471

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the American Statistical Association is currently edited by Xuming He, Jun Liu, Joseph Ibrahim and Alyson Wilson

More articles in Journal of the American Statistical Association from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().