The Stabilisation of Model Parameter Estimates from Repeated Surveys with Rare Observations

In many surveys, the domains of study are small and the samples that carry information on a domain can be very small indeed. If the survey is conducted repeatedly there is often a high degree of overlap in samples over time. We show how to use the richness of information over time to compensate for the paucity of cross-sectional information. We propose a model-based estimator of the population total which makes use of stabilised parameter estimates that combine information from different survey periods that are adjacent in time. The motivating example for this research was the ProdCom survey as implemented in the UK.