Categorical Analysis of Cross-Cultural Survey Data: Problemsand Strategies for Cluster Sampling Designs

授予西北大学的这一奖项将使研究人员能够对整群抽样对与跨文化调查数据的对数线性分析相关的推理程序的影响进行方法学研究。这项拟议的研究将检验整群抽样对10-1个变量以及这些变量的大量双向和三向列联表的设计效果。设计效应将被用来估计拒绝率的偏差量。这项研究将在三个不同大小、集群数量和地理分布的跨文化样本上重复进行。这一分析的结果将与使用最近开发的jacknife程序的修改得到的结果进行比较，该程序考虑了复杂的聚集和稳健而有效的推断。这项研究之所以重要，是因为跨文化研究是比较研究的一个主要部分，而比较世界各地的文化的方法论问题是重要的。这个项目有望促进我们对“高尔顿问题”的理解，也就是如何从每个案例可能不完全独立于其他案例的情况下做出推断的问题。

This award to Northwestern University will allow the investigator to conduct methodological research on the effects of cluster sampling on the inferential procedures associated with log-linear analysis of cross-cultural survey data. The proposed research will examine the design effects of cluster sampling on 10-1 variables and on a large number of two- and three-way contingency tables for these variables. The design effects will be used to estimate the amount of bias in rejection rates. The study will be repeated on three cross-cultural samples varying in size, number of clusters, and geographical spread. Results from this analysis will be compared with the results obtained using a modification of a recently developed jacknife procedure that takes into account complex clustering and yuields robust and efficient inference. This research is important because cross cultural research is a major part of comparative research, and the methodological problems of comparing cultures across the world are significant. This project promises to advance our understanding of "Galton's problem", or the problem of how one can make inferences from cases where each case may not be totally independent of the others.