Government and Social Statistics Section

Submitted by Debbie Griffin and Eric Rancourt

Members of the Social Statistics and Government Statistics sections have organized a great set of technical sessions and roundtables for the upcoming Joint Statistical Meetings in Montréal. In addition to papers, panels, and roundtables, the sections also encourage you to visit the poster sessions. Posters provide a great opportunity for you to interact with the authors to discuss their research.

The sessions begin on Sunday, August 4 at 2:00 p.m. and continue until the final session, Thursday, August 8. Below is a summary of the section-sponsored invited (I) and topic–contributed (TC) sessions and roundtables (R) by date. Section business meetings are in bold. This is a great place to network with other section members.

Sunday, August 4

• The Undercount of Young Children in Official Statistics (I)
• The 2013 Current Population Survey ASEC Field Test (TC)
• Robust Inference in Social Science with Wrong but Useful Models (TC)
• Complex Data Analysis and High-Dimensional Computing: Methods and Applications (I-Poster)

Monday, August 5

• Sampling Asians in the National Health and Examination Survey (R)
• Hurricanes, Damned Hurricanes, and Statistics (TC)
• Design and Adjustment Challenges in Modern Surveys (TC)
• Toward Better Statistical Methods for Causal Inference (I)
• The National Children’s Study (NCS) Vanguard Data Analytics (R)
• Graphical Approaches for Survey Data (I)
• Social Statistics Section Business Meeting (tentative date)

Tuesday, August 6

• New Developments in the Use of Smartphones for Survey Research (I)
• Bayesian Modeling of Populations (TC)
• Measuring Relationships in U.S. Federal Household Surveys (I)
• Blending Probability and Nonprobability Samples Using Calibration Techniques (R)
• Extracting Social Science Insights from Social Media (R)
• Government Statistics Section Business Meeting (tentative date)

Wednesday, August 7

• Elicitation of Data Users’ Utility Functions and Prior Information in Work with Large-Scale Data Collection for Government Agencies (I)
• Administrative Records Use for Health Insurance Research (TC)
• Administrative Records Quality, Coverage, and Applications for Surveys and Censuses (TC)
• An Attempt to Disentangle the Effect of Variables in Obama’s Presidential Election (R)
• Would the Real Steve Fienberg Please Stand Up? Getting to Know a Population from Multiple Incomplete Files (I)
• Record linkage Research and Applications (TC)

Thursday, August 8

• Evolution of Federal Statistical Agency Disclosure Review Boards (TC)
• New Paradigms for Missing Data Methods in Social and Economic Surveys (TC)
• Real-World Approaches to the Knotty Problems of Outliers, Faulty Values, and Covariates in Complex Sampling Designs (TC)
• Dynamic Modeling in Tobacco Control Policy (TC)

Visit the JSM 2013 online program to view the full set of sessions, including contributed paper and poster sessions.

In addition to the sessions the Government Statistics, Social Statistics in partnership with the Survey Research Methods Section, sponsor a student paper competition each year. The following is a list of the winning authors and papers.

• Matching for Balance, Pairing for Heterogeneity in an Observational Study of the Effectiveness of for-Profit and Not-for-Profit High Schools in Chile — Jose Zubizarreta, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• Enhancing Respondent Representativeness Through Responsive Design and External Benchmarks — Shin-Jung Lee, University of Michigan
• Aerial-Access Creel Surveys with Incomplete Matching of Aerial and Access Components — Audrey Béliveau, Simon Fraser University
• An Innovative Multiple Imputation Method to Accommodate Complex Sample Design Features — Hanzhi Zhou, University of Michigan
• Using School Lotteries to Evaluate the Value-Added Model — Jonah Deutsch, The University of Chicago

For information about the student paper competition/travel award to attend the Joint Statistical Meetings, visit the awards website.