Date:         Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:39:29 -0400
Reply-To:     Martine Ferguson <ferguson_m@BLS.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Martine Ferguson <ferguson_m@BLS.GOV>
Subject:      surveyselect

I wish to use the  PROC SURVEYSELECT procedure to program a PPS Cluster
Sample without Replacement (ie each cluster is selected without replacement
proportional to the size of that cluster).
The problem I have is that I can only select up to a certain number of
clusters and when I have reached my target number of units, I wish to stop
the procedure. For example, suppose people are split up into counties (what
I will call clusters) and I wish to sample a total of 100 people. I want to
keep selecting counties PPS without replacement until I have reached my
target sample size of 100.  Now, I do not know ahead of time how many
counties to sample because it all depends on which county is selected
first, the randomness of sampling, and will vary with each sample I select
(in other words I cannot use the sampsize= option because I do now know in
advance what that number will be).  Thefore, I cannot say, select say, 5
counties because there may not be 100 people in these 5 counties or there
may be over 100 people in these 5 counties.   I do not know how to do this
using SURVEYSELECT.  Does anybody know of any way by which I can use PROC
SURVEYSELECT and tell the procedure to stop running once I have sampled 100
people?
In addition, I want to run this procedure for 1000 iterations using a macro
(ie collect 1000 different samples) and PROC SURVEYSELECT takes days to run
on my computer.  Do you know of a way to shorten the processing time?
I appreciate any insight anyone may have on this and I thank you in advance
for any help you can provide me with.