Optimal resource allocation in survey designs |
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Authors: | Melania Calinescu Sandjai Bhulai Barry Schouten |
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Institution: | 1. VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands;2. Statistics Netherlands, Henri Faasdreef 312, 2492 JP The Hague, The Netherlands |
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Abstract: | Resource allocation is a relatively new research area in survey designs and has not been fully addressed in the literature. Recently, the declining participation rates and increasing survey costs have steered research interests towards resource planning. Survey organizations across the world are considering the development of new mathematical models in order to improve the quality of survey results while taking into account optimal resource planning. In this paper, we address the problem of resource allocation in survey designs and we discuss its impact on the quality of the survey results. We propose a novel method in which the optimal allocation of survey resources is determined such that the quality of survey results, i.e., the survey response rate, is maximized. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by extensive numerical experiments. |
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Keywords: | Resource allocation Nonlinear optimization Dynamic programming Markov decision theory Survey design Scheduling |
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