Assessing the Effect of Calibration on Nonresponse Bias in the 2008 ARMS Phase III Sample Using Census 2007 Data

The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts the annual Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). ARMS is a detailed economic survey suffering from relatively low response rates for a federal survey. To adjust for ARMS nonresponse bias, coverage and measurement errors, NASS uses calibration weighting. Prior research using 2002 Census of Agriculture data, available for 2005-2006 ARMS samples, indicated that calibration decreased nonresponse bias except in two cases; however, because not all ARMS calibration targets were collected on the 2002 Census of Agriculture, NASS did not fully replicate the ARMS calibration process. This study replicates prior research for the 2008 ARMS using the 2007 Census of Agriculture data, which includes equivalent variables for all ARMS calibration targets thus allowing NASS to assess fully the effectiveness of ARMS calibration.