title: Ranked set sampling for replicated sampling designs.
abstract: In practical ecological sampling studies, a certain design (such as plot sampling or line-intercept sampling) is usually replicated more than once. For each replication, the Horvitz-Thompson estimation of the objective parameter is considered. Finally, an overall estimator is achieved by averaging the single Horvitz-Thompson estimators. Because the design replications are drawn independently and under the same conditions, the overall estimator is simply the sample mean of the Horvitz-Thompson estimators under simple random sampling. This procedure may be wisely improved by using ranked set sampling. Hence, we propose the replicated protocol under ranked set sampling, which gives rise to a more accurate estimation than the replicated protocol under simple random sampling.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Metodi Quantitativi, Università di Siena, Italy. barabesi@unisi.it
authors.forename: Lucio
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Barabesi
authors.forename: Caterina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pisani
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018533:Biomass; D001699:Biometry; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D010944:Plants; D012494:Sampling Studies