Weighting and estimation methods : description in the Memobust handbook

The Memobust project aims at identifying best practices and at developing common methodology for designing and conducting statistical business surveys. These objectives are supported by guidelines consisting in an update of an existing handbook on methodology and design of business statistics (Willeboordse, 1998). The need for a new handbook has arisen both to include new issues in statistical methodology for business statistics and to make more flexible the existing handbook. The new handbook is planned as a set of separate and interconnected documents serving as introductory, contextual or background material or describing specific methods. It is primarily aimed at persons working at statistical institutes in the area of business statistics, in particular survey managers and statisticians involved in the production process. However, the handbook should particularly be useful for methodologists. First, Theme modules give a general description of topics and subtopics. They may be mainly useful for statisticians and survey managers when dealing with the production process, since they are thought for introducing the reader to problems that may occur, moreover suggestions for handling them are given. Then, there are also more technical modules, which refer to the methods used in the context of each topic. This module typology, named Method module, can be useful for survey managers who wish to deep the knowledge, and for methodologists that may find an updated stateof-the-art of methods on the issue. These modules are conceptually connected within each topic and between topics. At the same time, they are conceived as self-contained, so that the reader can access directly to the module describing the argument she/he is interested without the need of a preliminary reading of other sections. The content of the handbook is roughly structured according to the components of Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM). A detailed description of the handbook and of the structure of the modules is given in Willenborg et al., (2012). A complete overview of the planned contents of the handbook can be found on the project’s website ). In this paper we give an account of the structure of one of the topic of the handbook: Weighting and estimation, underlying the new content of the updated handbook under writing, with respect to the Handbook on the Design and Implementation of Business Surveys (Willeboordse, 1998).