Patent ID: 7246035

Claim:
A method for using multiple-sample frames in statistical analysis, comprising: (a) providing a population data set including a plurality of sample frames wherein each sample frame consists of a set of population elements, wherein each population element has a value, and wherein the plurality of sample frames overlap such that elements in one frame may also occur in any other frames such that the population to be sampled is partitioned into a plurality of unique disjoint subsets defined by in which frames the elements of the subset have membership; (b) selecting independent probability samples from each sample frame; (c) estimating a total for the element values of each disjoint subset by dividing the value for each element in the sample by the sum of frame selection probabilities for such element to obtain a result and then taking a sum of the result for all elements in the subset's sample; (d) deriving an estimate for the total for the value for the population as a sum of the estimated totals; and (e) storing the estimate for the total for the value for the population.