Prediction of finite population totals based on the sample distribution

This article studies the use of the sample distribution for the prediction of finite population totals under single-stage sampling. The proposed predictors employ the sample values of the target study variable, the sampling weights of the sample units and possibly known population values of auxiliary variables. The prediction problem is solved by estimating the expectation of the study values for units outside the sample as a function of the corresponding expectation under the sample distribution and the sampling weights. The prediction mean square error is estimated by a combination of an inverse sampling procedure and a re-sampling method. An interesting outcome of the present analysis is that several familiar estimators in common use are shown to be special cases of the proposed approach, thus providing them a new interpretation. The performance of the new and some old predictors in common use is evaluated and compared by a Monte Carlo simulation study using a real data set