The demand for small (local-level) area statistics has increased tremendously, particularly in countries where a decentralised approach to governance and service provision has been adopted. However, most of these countries lack local-level statistics to aid policy decisions and planning. Sample surveys such as the Demographic and Health Survey provide a wide range of invaluable data at the national and regional level but cannot be used directly to produce reliable district-level estimates due to small sample sizes. The small area estimation (SAE) technique overcomes the sample size challenges and can generate representative and reliable estimates at the local (or small area) level by linking outcome of interests that are recorded in survey with auxiliary data from census or administrative datasets. This talk illustrates an application of SAE method to generate district-level estimates of prevalence of diarrhoea among under-five children in Bangladesh by combining Demographic and Health Survey and Population Census data. The diagnostics measures show that the estimates generated by SAE method are precise and robust when compared to the direct survey estimates. In countries where small area statistics are non-existent, SAE techniques could be crucial for designing effective policies and strengthening local-level governance.

Dr Hukum Chandra is the Principal Scientist at the Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute in New Delhi, India. He completed his PhD in Social Statistics at the University of Southampton and his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Dr Chandra has made outstanding research contributions to the discipline of statistics in general and survey sampling, in particular, for which he has been recognised globally. His research interests are in survey sampling design and analysis, small area estimation, bootstrap methods, statistical modelling and data analysis, and statistical methodological development in the area of agricultural statistics. He has received a number of awards for his excellent research contribution, such as the National Award in Statistics by the Indian Government’s Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the Cochran-Hansen Award by the International Association of Survey Statisticians for his PhD thesis, and the Young Researcher/Student Award of the American Statistical Association. He is a council member of the International Association of Survey Statisticians and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI).

This is a joint seminar with the Research School of Population Health.