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Definition
Small-area analysis “[…] tackles the problem of providing reliable estimates of one or several variables of interest in areas where the information available on those variables is, on its own, not sufficient to provide a valid estimate” (Gómez-Rubio & Salvati, 2007).
Description
The terms ‘small area’ and ‘local area’ are commonly used to denote a small geographical area, such as a county, a municipality or a census division. They may also describe a ‘small domain,’ i.e., a small subpopulation such as a specific age-sex-race group of people within a large geographical area. (Gosh & Rao, 1994; Rao, 2003)
Although information for small areas is needed for both research and policy issues, it is often scarce and difficult to obtain. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006) remarks, “most surveys are designed to provide statistically reliable, design based estimates only at the national and/or state/territory geographic levels. The sheer...
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Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2006). A Guide to Small Area Estimation - Version 1.1. http://www.nss.gov.au/nss/home.NSF/533222ebfd5ac03aca25711000044c9e/3a60738d0abdf98cca2571ab00242664/$FILE/May%2006.pdf..
Brackstone, G. J. (1987). Small area data: Policy issues and technical challenges. In R. Platek, J. N. K. Rao, C. E. Sarndal, & M. P. Singh (Eds.), Small area statistics (pp. 3–20). New York: Wiley.
Gómez-Rubio, V., & Salvati, N. (2007). Introduction to Small Area Estimation. The BIAS Project. http://www.bias-project.org.uk/software/SAE.pdf.
Gonzalez, M. E. (1973). Use and evaluation of synthetic estimators. In Proceedings of the social statistics section (pp. 33–36). Washington, DC: American Statistical Association.
Gosh, M., & Rao, J. N. K. (1994). Small area estimation: An appraisal. Statistical Science, 9(1), 55–76.
Rao, J.N.K. (2003): Small Area Estimation. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Smith, S. K. (2003). Small-area analysis. In P. Demeny & G. McNicoll (Eds.), Encyclopedia of population (pp. 898–901). Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference.
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Romani, J. (2014). Small-Area Analysis. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2723
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