previous census. One can update the population using population growth at some aggregate level. If the population is updated at a more granular level than administrative units, changes in the population distribution across areas can at least partly resolve problems due to outdated data. However, any adjustments will not change the PSU’s probability of being selected in the first stage if the adjustments are made at the administrative units or more aggregate level, such as regions. The reason is that the PPS is specific across administrative units, and any monotonic transformation of PSU size within the administrative units cannot change the PSU’s selection probability. Therefore, the population and number of households should be adjusted at a level more granular than administrative units.

# **2.2 Electoral Precincts**

The data on electoral precincts is publicly available and generally trustworthy as the official general election committee publishes the data. There are two advantages to using this dataset as a sampling frame for household surveys. First, the data is regularly updated and current. Second, there are 1,992 electoral precincts, more than the 1,037 settlements in the 2011 Census settlement data. Therefore, the spatial information is relatively more granular than the 2011 Census data, and problems associated with a few large-sized PSUs are less severe than those under a potential sampling frame based on census settlements.

However, like the “settlements” in the 2011 Census data, employing electoral precincts as PSUs also poses a problem associated with large-sized PSUs. It is also worth mentioning that there are also some small-sized electoral precincts, which are less problematic. As stated in Pettersson (2023), the size of voting point areas in Armenia ranges from 7 addresses to 1,200 addresses. The small voting point (VP) areas can be combined with a neighboring area or neighboring areas, and large VP areas can be divided into smaller segments. The procedure for merging multiple VP areas should be straightforward; however, segmenting large areas could be costly as it requires some spatial analysis and probably cartographic tasks.

Additionally, the boundaries of PSUs are needed because the enumerator might go beyond the targeted area if they do not know the boundaries. This feature is absent in both sampling frames under investigation in this section since there is no boundary (neither digitally nor physically) available for the Census settlements and electoral precincts. However, it is more disadvantageous for the precinct-based sampling frame because precincts are relatively smaller in area than settlements. The probability of enumerators walking into the nonselected PSUs that neighbor with the selected PSU is thus higher for precincts. Enumerators can walk outside the boundary for some very small electoral precincts, such as the one with 7 addresses, if not provided with a proper map while doing the fieldwork.

The pros and cons of a frame based on the 2023 electoral precincts show that it is relatively better than the frame based on the 2011 Census settlements. Thus, the 2023 electoral precincts have been further evaluated as a sampling frame for representative individual- and household-level surveys by exploring the data on electoral precincts. The size of the electoral precinct is measured by the number of voters or adult population, which leaves out children or individuals younger than 18 years old. **Table 1** shows the distribution of strata size using total and adult population. The strata are similarly defined as earlier, i.e., the combination of _marz_ and settlement type—urban or rural status. The 2020 population is obtained from the WorldPop predicted based on the 2011 Census (Bondarenko et al., 2020). Then the 2020 population has been predicted further to 2022 as shown in Column 1 using strata-level population growth obtained from the Committee of the Republic of Armenia (ArmStat). The estimated total population in 2022 in this data is 2.9 million, close to the official statistics from ArmStat. Column 2 displays the 2023 number of voters (adult population who are 18 or older) obtained from the electoral precinct-based sampling frame. Column 3 presents the difference between the population and the adult population in subsequent years. Although these two population 7