surveyoptions             package:survey             R Documentation

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_D_e_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n:

     This help page documents the options that control the behaviour of
     the survey package.

_D_e_t_a_i_l_s:

     All the options for the survey package have names beginning with
     "survey".  Three of them control standard error estimation.

     When 'options("survey.ultimate.cluster")' is 'TRUE', standard
     error estimation is based on independence of PSUs at the first
     stage of sampling, without using any information about subsequent
     stages (this is what Stata and many other packages do). When
     'FALSE', finite population corrections and variances are estimated
     recursively. See 'svyrecvar' for more information.

     Handling of strata with a single PSU that are not certainty PSUs
     is controlled by 'options("survey.lonely.psu")'. The default
     setting is '"fail"', which gives an error. Use '"remove"' to
     ignore that PSU for variance computation, '"adjust"' to center the
     stratum at the population mean rather than the stratum mean, and
     '"average"' to replace the variance contribution of the stratum by
     the average variance contribution across strata.

     The variance formulas for domain estimation give well-defined,
     positive results when a stratum contains only one PSU with
     observations in the domain, but are not unbiased.  If
     'options("survey.adjust.domain.lonely")' is 'TRUE' and
     'options("survey.lonely.psu")' is '"average"' or '"adjust"' the
     same adjustment for lonely PSUs will be used within a domain.

     The fourth option is 'options("survey.want.obsolete")'. This
     controls the warnings about using the deprecated pre-2.9.0 survey
     design objects.

