Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

The Information In Aggregate Data, David Steel, Eric Beh, Raymond Chambers

Professor David Steel

Ecological inference attempts to draw conclusions concerning individual-level relationships using data in the form of aggregates for groups in the population. The groups are often geographically defined. A fundamental statistical issue is how much information aggregate data contain concerning the relationships and parameters that we are trying to estimate. The information affects the standard errors of estimates as well as the power of any tests of hypothesis. It also affects the ability to tell, from the aggregate data, which different models under consideration are supported by the data. In this chapter likelihood-based methods are considered. We show in general how …