Design based synthetic imputation methods for domain mean

Abstract

In real life, situations may arise when the available data are insufcient to provide accurate estimates for the domain, the small area estimation (SAE) technique has been used to get accurate estimates for the variable under study. The problem of missing data is a serious problem that has an impact on sample surveys, but small area estimates are especially prone to it. This paper is a basic efort that suggests design based synthetic imputation methods for the domain mean estimation using simple random sampling in order to address the issue of missing data under SAE. The expression of the mean square error for the proposed imputation methods are obtained up to frst order approximation. The efciency conditions are determined and a thorough simulation study is carried out using artifcially generated data sets. An application is included with real data that further supports this study.