The Calibration of Weights by Calif Tool in the Practice of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic

The main scope of statistical surveys is to determine sample estimates. If some auxiliary population totals are available, an inferential step could enlarge precision. Calibration estimators are mostly used by statistical agencies. Since 2005, calibration at Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic has gradually moved from intuitive methods to the use of sophisticated tools, mainly SAS macro CALMAR2. The commerce licence, lack of user-friendliness and need for more precise estimates were the important motivations to create own tool Calif, written in the R software. It offers easy-to-use graphical user interface, enhances estimate quality and at last, but not at least, is freely available. It is well suited for each statistical survey and has replaced CALMAR2 in the process of calibration of weights in the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. In this paper we present Calif and its characteristics, compared with previous procedure on the example of the Household Budget Survey microdata.