The 25th Annual Morris Hansen Lecture will take place on Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 3:30-5:30pm, at the Jefferson Auditorium at the US Department of Agriculture on Independence Avenue (between 12th and 14th streets).
This year's Hansen Lecturer will be Professor Steve Thompson, Simon Fraser University.
Lecture title: "Adaptive and Network Sampling in Changing Populations".
Discussants: Mark Handcock, University of California, Los Angeles, and Andrew Gelman, Columbia University.
Abstract: Adaptive sampling typically has the form of selecting new units near sample units with high observed values or far from sample units with low observed values in surveys of rare, clustered, or unevenly distributed populations. In network settings adaptive link-tracing designs may be used in surveys of hidden and hard-to-reach populations, and the probabilities of following different social links may depend on values of variables associated with people or their links. In surveys that are carried out over time in populations that are continually changing, it is useful to think of sampling designs in stochastic process terms, with units coming into the sample and leaving the sample as time goes on. Sampling designs have traditionally been used for making inferences about population characteristics, but also have a role in setting experiments in populations and distributing interventions to benefit a population. In this talk, I will discuss existing and potential uses of adaptive sampling designs in each of the above settings and for each of these uses. Examples from human health, environmental and natural resource studies, agriculture and other fields will be used for illustration.
The Hansen Lecture is jointly sponsored by WSS, WESTAT and NASS.