Complex Surveys: a guide to analysis using R (original) (raw)

This is the web site for the book Complex Surveys: a guide to analysis using R, published by Wiley.

Now availablefor the Kindle (Sept 2011)

The initial price will be about half what is charged for most survey sampling texts. It is softcover, which explains part of the lower price. If you are concerned that price reflects quality, then just wait a year or so and the price should be higher.

You can download the table of contents and preface to see what is in the book, and why. The book is based around the R survey package, and includes a lot of code, a lot of data, and relatively few formulas.

Not quite all the data sets are up here yet...

Data

Data sets used in exercises in the book. Many of these are of realistic size, ie, large

• The California Schools/Academic Performance Index population and samples are built into the survey package. Load them with data(api). [At the moment this does not include apisrs which you can download here]
• NHANES III imputations(31Mb) in SQLite format. Original source National Center for Health Statistics
• various XPORT files(10Mb) from NHANES 2003-2004and 2005-2006, also from the National Center for Health Statistics. Detailed documentation is at the NCHS links.
• California Health Interview Survey 2005 public use file (30Mb, in Stata format,'adult.dta' in the book), and the documentation
• Data from SIPP, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, wave 1 of the 1996 panel, in a SQLite database(98Mb)
• Scottish Household Survey data subset(1.5Mb) from PEAS. The full public use data can be obtained by registering with theUK Data Archive
• Family Resources Survey data subset(0.2Mb) from PEASThe full public use data can be obtained by registering with the UK Data Archive
• The PPS sample of US election data used in section 3.3 and the population it came from are built in to the survey package and can be loaded with data(election)
• The map examples based on BRFSS data used the version of the BRFSS GIS data that was available in late 2008. In March 2009 the data file was changed, omitting the FIPS codes. To make the map code in the book work, you need the old version.
• Data (<mscm.txt>) from the Mothers' and Children's Morbidity Study, used in Chapter 10. These data were obtained from Patrick Heagerty's web site for Analysis of Longitudinal Data by Diggle, Heagerty, Liang & Zeger.
• The BRFSS 2007 data as a HUGE (245Mb) SQLite database.

Graphs

• Color plots of the 2004 US election: a sample of 5000 votes, colored and jittered, with dots or transparent circles. A color version of Figure 3.1, mentioned in section 4.6.1
• Coplot of systolic and diastolic blood pressure by age and sex, data from NHANES 2003-2004, mentioned in section 4.5 of the book.
• code for the combined city/count BRFSS maps at the end of chapter 4. This uses the CDC 'SMART' data
• Health insurance by state and age, a color version of Figure 4.24. Unfortunately, the CDC have modified the 'SMART' GIS data to exclude the FIPS codes for states. To make the code in the book work, you need the old version
• Code for Figures 4.25 and 4.26, and other variations on maps with both city and state data. These need the the old version of the BRFSS GIS data (with FIPS codes). Unzip the file in a subdirectory called GIS and run the code in the parent directory.

Other books you might prefer

Some (otherwise) reasonable people think that a book on survey analysis should have lots of formulas, shouldn't be tied to a particular software system, and should be written by someone with more of a publication record in survey methodology. There are many excellent books available that satisfy these criteria, and I can recommend the following three from personal experience:

• For an improved version of the standard undergraduate course, Sharon Lohr's Sampling: Design and Analysis. The second edition has just appeared, and expands the areas covered. It includes code in SAS, which some people will see another added feature. Tobias Verbeke had packaged the data sets and exercises in the first edition for R.
• For mathematical details, Model Assisted Survey Sampling by Sarndal, Swensson, and Wretman. This is the main reference for formulas in my book.
• If you are not interested in R or in doing your own two-phase designs, Analysis of Health Surveys by Korn and Graubard covers fairly similar topics to my book, with slightly more mathematics.