Weight smoothing for nonprobability surveys
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Adjustment techniques to mitigate selection bias in nonprobability samples often involve modelling the propensity to participate in the nonprobability sample along with inverse propensity weighting. It is well known that procedures for estimating weights are effective if the covariates selected in the propensity model are related to both the variable of interest and the participation indicator. In most surveys, there are many variables of interest, making weight adjustments difficult to determine as a suitable weight for one variable may be unsuitable for other variables. The standard compromise is to include a large number of covariates in the propensity model but this may increase the variability of the estimates, especially when some covariates are weakly related to the variables of interest. Weight smoothing, developed for probability surveys, could be helpful in these situations. It aims to remove the variability caused by overfit propensity models by replacing the inverse propensity weights with predicted weights obtained using a smoothing model. In this article, we study weight smoothing in the nonprobability survey context, both theoretically and empirically, to understand its effectiveness at improving the efficiency of estimates.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.031 | 0.185 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".