Evaluation of Descriptive Analyses of Survey Variances and Confidence Interval Widths.

The precision of point estimators is often characterized through approximation. Practical evaluation of the adequacy of an approximation depends on whether one is interested in (1) summary descriptions of a fixed set of variance estimates or confidence interval widths, or (2) formal inference (for example, confidence intervals or test statistics) for related functions of finite-population or superpopulation parameters. Following a review of the issues, this paper uses fixed-effect analysis of variance methods to develop diagnostics for summary descriptions.