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Estimating prevalence using composites

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Abstract

We are interested in estimating the fraction of a population that possesses a certain trait, such as the presence of a chemical contaminant in a lake. A composite sample drawn from a population has the trait in question whenever one or more of the individual samples making up the composite has the trait. Let the true fraction of the population that is contaminated be p. Classical estimators of p, such as the MLE and the jackknife, have been shown to be biased. In this study, we introduce a new shrinking estimator which can be used when doing composite sampling. The properties of this estimator are investigated and compared with those of the MLE and the jackknife.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics, Department of Statistics, The Pennsylvania State University, 421 Thomas Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA

    Silvestre Colón, Ganapati P. Patil & Charles Taillie

Authors
  1. Silvestre Colón
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  2. Ganapati P. Patil
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  3. Charles Taillie
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Colón, S., Patil, G.P. & Taillie, C. Estimating prevalence using composites. Environmental and Ecological Statistics 8, 213–236 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011387523306

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011387523306

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