AREA SAMPLING- SOME PRINCIPLES OF SAMPLE DESIGN BY MORRIS H. HANSEN AND PHILIP M. HAUSER WHEREVER polling men gather, they are likcly to debate the quota vs. the area sampling methods. Wherever non-technicians interested in the polls gather, they are likely to want to know the meaning of the two esoteric-sounding terms. This article contributes both to the explanation and to the debate. Messrs. Hansen and Hauser describe the principles on which area sampling is based and indicate the types
of situations in which they believe the one method is to be preferred over the other. Morris Hansen and Philip Hauser, both distinguished statisticians, write with the authority of leaders in the development of the area sampling method. Mr. Hansen is now Statistical Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census; Mr. Hauser, Assistant Director of the U.S. Bureau, of the Census.
CoNsmxmLE ATTENTION has been devoted in the past months by survey and public opinion poll organizations to problems of sampling design. In part, this is attributable to the developments and innovations in sampling techniques and procedures in the statistical work of the Federalrgovernment, particularly in the Bureau of the Census and in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, and, in part, to the investigation of the 1944 election poll of the Institute of Public Opinion by the House Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures.' This attention, however, undoubtedly reflects the continuing interest' of survey organizations in the improvement of techniques in all phases of their activities, including sampling. In the following an attempt is made to indicate the types of situations in which one method of sampling is to be prderred over another and to describe the principles on which area sampling is based. In this discussion of sampling methods, we shall consider only the discrepancies between the results obtainable from a complete enumeration of the population under consideration and the estimates made from a sample. Errors of interviewing and other errors arising in survey results that are present in a complete enumeration as much as in a sample enumeration may be either more or less important than sampling errors. We shall confine our remarks here to errors arising because only a sample is covered instead of taking a complete census of a finite population. l Hearings before the Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures, House of Representatives, 78th Congress, 2nd Session o n H. Res. 551, Part 12, U.S. Government P ~ i n t i n g Ofice, Washington, I 945.