Conjugate Bayesian Unit-level Modeling of Count Data Under Informative Sampling Designs

Abstract: Unit-level models for survey data offer many advantages over their area-level counterparts, such as potential for more precise estimates and a natural benchmarking property. However two main challenges occur in this context: accounting for an informative survey design and handling non-Gaussian data types. The pseudo-likelihood approach is one solution to the former, and conjugate multivariate distribution theory offers a solution to the latter. By combining these approaches, we attain a unit-level model for count data that accounts for informative sampling designs and includes fully Bayesian model uncertainty propagation. Importantly, conjugate full conditional distributions hold under the pseudo-likelihood, yielding an extremely computationally efficient approach. Our method is illustrated via an empirical simulation study using count data from the American Community Survey public-use microdata sample.