Steven K. Thompson

Professor of Statistics
Ph.D., Oregon State University, 1982

Summary of research interests

Dr. Thompson's research interests include sampling theory and methods, sampling in spatial and graph settings, environmental statistics, estimation involving hidden human populations, and general issues in statistical design and inference.

One line of his research has been the development of adaptive sampling designs. Adaptive sampling designs are those in which the procedure for selecting the units to include in the sample depends on observations made during the survey. For example, in a survey to estimate the abundance of a rare bird species, whenever an area of unusual abundance is encountered, additional observations may be added in the neighboring vicinity. In a study of a hidden human population such as injecting drug users, sex workers, and others at risk for HIV infection, whenever a respondent with high-risk behavior is encountered, social links may be followed to add additional individuals to the sample. Adaptive designs can produce gains in precision compared to conventional designs for sampling rare, clustered populations. For hidden human populations, designs that adaptively follow links from one research participant to another may provide the only way to reach some members of the population. In addition to increasing estimation efficiency, adaptive designs often increase the yield of the sample - increasing for example the number of birds observed or hidden population members interviewed.

Representative Publications:

Books:

Thompson, S.K. (2002). Sampling, Second Edition. New York: Wiley.

Thompson, S.K. and Seber, G.A.F. (1996). Adaptive Sampling. New York: Wiley.

Articles:

Thompson, S.K. (1990). Adaptive cluster sampling. Journal of the American Statistical Association 85: 1050-1059.

Thompson, S.K. (1991). Adaptive cluster sampling: Designs with primary and secondary units. Biometrics 47: 1103-1115.

Thompson, S.K. (1991). Stratified adaptive cluster sampling. Biometrika 78: 389-397.

Thompson, S.K. and Seber, G.A.F. (1994). Detectability in conventional and adaptive sampling. Biometrics 50: 712-724.

Thompson, S.K. (1996). Adaptive cluster sampling based on order statistics. Environmetrics 7: 123-133.

Thompson, S.K. (1997).  Effective sampling strategies for
spatial studies.  Metron 55: 1-21.

Thompson, S.K, and Frank, O. (2000).  Model-based estimation with
link-tracing sampling designs.  Survey Methodology 26: 87-98.

Chao, T-C., and Thompson, S.K. (2001).  Optimal adaptive sampling
with a lognormal model.  Environmetrics, 12: 517-538.