Survey Weighting and Calibration

Survey weighting is a statistical procedure that assigns a numeric weight to each sampled unit so that the weighted sample reproduces known population totals. Rooted in classical sampling theory and systematically synthesized by Sharon Lohr (2010), the approach corrects for unequal selection probabilities, unit nonresponse, and coverage gaps, producing estimates that are more representative of the target population than raw sample means or totals would be.