2013 Methods-of-Payment Survey: Sample Calibration Analysis

Sample calibration is a procedure that utilizes sample and national-level demographic distribution information to weight survey participants. The objective of calibration is to weight the sample so that it is demographically representative of the target population. This technical report details our calibration analysis for the 2013 Methods-of-Payment survey questionnaire sample. The analysis makes use of a variety of variables, with corresponding distributions from the 2011 National Household Survey and 2012 Canadian Internet Use Survey. Our primary objective is to seek a sensible set of variables for calibration and to propose a set of final weights that meet a validation criterion.

A raking ratio calibration procedure is used in the analysis. We base calibration on candidate variables and nesting of pairs of variables chosen within the context of the study. An imputation strategy is implemented to account for the relatively few missing observations. Three samples are obtained for the survey and we summarize an analysis that suggests that calibration should be based on the full/collapsed data set. We describe our research on several validation criteria and, after testing the calibration procedure, report our proposed set of final weights.