Stratified Sampling

Stratified sampling
In statistics, stratified sampling is a method of sampling from a population which can be partitioned into
subpopulations.
In statistical surveys, when subpopulations within an overall

population vary, it could be advantageous to sample each
subpopulation (stratum) independently.
Stratification is the process of dividing members of the population

into homogeneous subgroups before sampling. The strata should
define a partition of the population. That is, it should be collectively
exhaustive and mutually exclusive: every element in the population
must be assigned to one and only one stratum. Then simple random
sampling is applied within each stratum. The objective is to
improve the precision of the sample by reducing sampling error. It
can produce a weighted mean that has less variability than the Stratified sampling example
arithmetic mean of a simple random sample of the population.
In computational statistics, stratified sampling is a method of variance reduction when Monte Carlo
methods are used to estimate population statistics from a known population.[1]
Example
Assume that we need to estimate the average number of votes for each candidate in an election. Assume
that a country has 3 towns: Town A has 1 million factory workers, Town B has 2 million office workers
and Town C has 3 million retirees. We can choose to get a random sample of size 60 over the entire
population but there is some chance that the resulting random sample is poorly balanced across these towns
and hence is biased, causing a significant error in estimation (when the outcome of interest has a different
distribution, in terms of the parameter of interest, between the towns). Instead, if we choose to take a
random sample of 10, 20 and 30 from Town A, B and C respectively, then we can produce a smaller error
in estimation for the same total sample size. This method is generally used when a population is not a
homogeneous group.
Stratified sampling strategies

1. Proportionate allocation uses a sampling fraction in each of the strata that are proportional to
that of the total population. For instance, if the population consists of n total individuals, m of
which are male and f female (and where m + f = n), then the relative size of the two samples
(x1 = m/n males, x2 = f/n females) should reflect this proportion.
2. Optimum allocation (or disproportionate allocation) - The sampling fraction of each stratum is
proportionate to both the proportion (as above) and the standard deviation of the distribution
of the variable. Larger samples are taken in the strata with the greatest variability to generate
the least possible overall sampling variance.
A real-world example of using stratified sampling would be for a political survey. If the respondents needed
to reflect the diversity of the population, the researcher would specifically seek to include participants of
various minority groups such as race or religion, based on their proportionality to the total population as
mentioned above. A stratified survey could thus claim to be more representative of the population than a
survey of simple random sampling or systematic sampling.
Advantages
The reasons to use stratified sampling rather than simple random sampling include[2]
1. If measurements within strata have a lower standard deviation (as compared to the overall
standard deviation in the population), stratification gives a smaller error in estimation.
2. For many applications, measurements become more manageable and/or cheaper when the
population is grouped into strata.
3. When it is desirable to have estimates of the population parameters for groups within the
population - stratified sampling verifies we have enough samples from the strata of interest.
If the population density varies greatly within a region, stratified sampling will ensure that estimates can be
made with equal accuracy in different parts of the region, and that comparisons of sub-regions can be made
with equal statistical power. For example, in Ontario a survey taken throughout the province might use a
larger sampling fraction in the less populated north, since the disparity in population between north and
south is so great that a sampling fraction based on the provincial sample as a whole might result in the
collection of only a handful of data from the north.
Disadvantages
Stratified sampling is not useful when the population cannot be exhaustively partitioned into disjoint
subgroups. It would be a misapplication of the technique to make subgroups' sample sizes proportional to
the amount of data available from the subgroups, rather than scaling sample sizes to subgroup sizes (or to
their variances, if known to vary significantly—e.g. using an F Test). Data representing each subgroup are
taken to be of equal importance if suspected variation among them warrants stratified sampling. If subgroup
variances differ significantly and the data needs to be stratified by variance, it is not possible to
simultaneously make each subgroup sample size proportional to subgroup size within the total population.
For an efficient way to partition sampling resources among groups that vary in their means, variance and
costs, see "optimum allocation". The problem of stratified sampling in the case of unknown class priors
(ratio of subpopulations in the entire population) can have a deleterious effect on the performance of any
analysis on the dataset, e.g. classification.[3] In that regard, minimax sampling ratio can be used to make the
dataset robust with respect to uncertainty in the underlying data generating process.[3]
Combining sub-strata to ensure adequate numbers can lead to Simpson's paradox, where trends that exist in
different groups of data disappear or even reverse when the groups are combined.
Mean and standard error

The mean and variance of stratified random sampling are given by:[2]
where,
number of strata
the sum of all stratum sizes
size of stratum
sample mean of stratum
number of observations in stratum
sample standard deviation of stratum
Note that the term ( − )/( − ), which equals 1 − , is a finite population correction and
must be expressed in "sample units". Foregoing the finite population correction gives:
where the = / is the population weight of stratum .
Sample size allocation

For the proportional allocation strategy, the size of the sample in each stratum is taken in proportion to the
size of the stratum. Suppose that in a company there are the following staff:[4]
male, full-time: 90
male, part-time: 18
female, full-time: 9
female, part-time: 63
total: 180
and we are asked to take a sample of 40 staff, stratified according to the above categories.
The first step is to calculate the percentage of each group of the total.
% male, full-time = 90 ÷ 180 = 50%

% male, part-time = 18 ÷ 180 = 10%
% female, full-time = 9 ÷ 180 = 5%
% female, part-time = 63 ÷ 180 = 35%
This tells us that of our sample of 40,
50% (20 individuals) should be male, full-time.

10% (4 individuals) should be male, part-time.
5% (2 individuals) should be female, full-time.
35% (14 individuals) should be female, part-time.
Another easy way without having to calculate the percentage is to multiply each group size by the sample
size and divide by the total population size (size of entire staff):
male, full-time = 90 × (40 ÷ 180) = 20

male, part-time = 18 × (40 ÷ 180) = 4
female, full-time = 9 × (40 ÷ 180) = 2
female, part-time = 63 × (40 ÷ 180) = 14
See also
Mathematics
portal
Opinion poll
Multistage sampling
Statistical benchmarking
Stratified sample size
Stratification (clinical trials)
References
1. Botev, Z.; Ridder, A. (2017). "Variance Reduction". Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference
Online: 1–6. doi:10.1002/9781118445112.stat07975 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2F978111844
5112.stat07975). ISBN 9781118445112.
2. "6.1 How to Use Stratified Sampling | STAT 506" (https://online.stat.psu.edu/stat506/lesson/
6/6.1). onlinecourses.science.psu.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
3. Shahrokh Esfahani, Mohammad; Dougherty, Edward R. (2014). "Effect of separate sampling
on classification accuracy" (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fbioinformatics%2Fbtt662).
Bioinformatics. 30 (2): 242–250. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btt662 (https://doi.org/10.1093%
2Fbioinformatics%2Fbtt662). PMID 24257187 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24257187).
4. Hunt, Neville; Tyrrell, Sidney (2001). "Stratified Sampling" (https://archive.today/2013101313
2818/http://nestor.coventry.ac.uk/~nhunt/meths/strati.html). Webpage at Coventry University.
Archived from the original (http://nestor.coventry.ac.uk/~nhunt/meths/strati.html) on 13
October 2013. Retrieved 12 July 2012.
Further reading
Särndal, Carl-Erik; et al. (2003). "Stratified Sampling". Model Assisted Survey Sampling.
New York: Springer. pp. 100–109. ISBN 0-387-40620-4.
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Stratified sampling

In statistical surveys, when subpopulations within an overall

Stratification is the process of dividing members of the population

Stratified sampling strategies

Mean and standard error

the sum of all stratum sizes

sample mean of stratum

number of observations in stratum

sample standard deviation of stratum

where the = / is the population weight of stratum .

Sample size allocation

% male, full-time = 90 ÷ 180 = 50%

This tells us that of our sample of 40,

50% (20 individuals) should be male, full-time.

male, full-time = 90 × (40 ÷ 180) = 20

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stratified_sampling&oldid=1155376087"

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