Survey Software: R survey functions
Summary of survey software:
R survey functions
Distributor
R Project (the R Foundation)
The Survey functions for R were contributed by Thomas Lumley,
Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington.
Types of designs that can be accommodated.
- Designs incorporating stratification, clustering, and possibly multistage
sampling, allowing unequal sampling probabilities or weights.
- PPS sampling with replacement
- Approximations for multistage PPS without replacement
- Simple two-phase designs
- Multiply-imputed data
Types of estimands and statistical analyses that can be accomodated.
- mean, quantiles, variance, tables, ratios, totals
- graphics: scatterplots, smoothers, boxplots, barcharts
- generalised linear models (e.g. linear regression, logistic regression, Poisson models, etc.)
- proportional hazards models
- proportional odds and other cumulative link models
- survival curves
- post-stratification, raking, and calibration
- tests of association in two-way tables
- loglinear models for multiway tables
Restrictions on number of variables or observations.
Only those due to limitations of available memory or disk capacity. Data can be stored in a relational database and automatically loaded as needed.
Primary methods used for variance estimation.
- Taylor series linearization
- Replication weighting
General description of the "feel" of the software.
Functions to be used within a programming language, with each call to be
entered from the command line or included in scripts or programs.
R is an open-source implementation of the popular S
language (commercially distributed in the S-Plus package).
Platforms on which the software can be run.
R can be run on
- Intel computers with Windows 2000 or better
- Mac OS X 10.3 or later
- Linux
- Most Unix systems.
R is distributed as precompiled binaries for Windows and Mac, and as
auto-configuring source code for Unix. Most parts of the survey code
should be easy to port to work with S-Plus; a port of version 3.6-8
to S-Plus 8 is available.
Pricing and terms.
Free download (GNU LGPL). R is updated about twice per year and the survey
package is updated as needed. The current (4/2009) versions are 2.9.0 for R and 3.12-1 for the survey package.
Contact information.
For information on R see http://www.r-project.org/. To download
R, select a CRAN (R archive) site from
http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html. To download the survey analysis
package, visit a CRAN site, select "Package sources" from the menu, and
select "survey". Then you can download source for the package and a
Reference Manual in PDF. Binary packages for Windows and Mac OS X can be
installed from menu options in R.
The home page for this package, maintained by the author, Thomas
Lumley, is at
http://faculty.washington.edu/tlumley/survey/.
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