Allocation in Multi-way Stratification by Linear Programing

Winkler (1990, 2001), Sitter and Skinner (1994), Wilson and Sitter (2002) present a method which applies linear programing to designing surveys with multi-way stratification, primarily in situation where the desired sample size is less than or only slightly larger than the total number of stratification cells. A comparison is made with existing methods both by illustrating the sampling schemes generated for specific examples, by evaluating sample mean, variance estimation, and mean squared errors, and by simulating sample mean for all methods. The computations required can, however, increase rapidly as the number of cells in the multi-way classification increase. In this article their approach is applied to multi-way stratification using real data.