Modeling Weights to Generalize (my talk this Wed noon at the Columbia University statistics department)

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science 2024-09-09

In the student-organized seminar series, Wed 11 Sep 2024 noon in room 903 Social Work Bldg:

Modeling Weights to Generalize

A well-known rule in practical survey research is to include weights when estimating a population average but not to use weights when fitting a regression model—as long as the regression includes as predictors all the information that went into the sampling weights. But what if you don’t know where the weights came from? We propose a quasi-Bayesian approach using a joint regression of the outcome and the sampling weight, followed by poststratifcation on the two variables, thus using design information within a model-based context to obtain inferences for small-area estimates, regressions, and other population quantities of interest. For background, see here: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/weight_regression.pdf

Research!