The effect of Informative Selection on the estimation of parameters related to Spatial Processes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how informative selection influences the estimation of parameters in spatial processes, highlighting the induced dependence and differences between sample and population distributions in a continuous spatial context.

Contribution

It extends the concept of informative selection to spatial processes, analyzing its impact on dependence and distribution estimation in continuous spaces.

Findings

Informative selection induces dependence among spatial units.

Sample distribution can differ significantly from the population distribution.

Dependence structure affects parameter estimation in spatial processes.

Abstract

This paper extends the concept of informative selection, population distribution and sample distribution to a spatial process context. These notions were first defined in a context where the output of the random process of interest consists of independent and identically distributed realisations for each individual of a population. It has been showed that informative selection was inducing a stochastic dependence among realisations on the selected units. In the context of spatial processes, the "population" is a continuous space and realisations for two different elements of the population are not independent. We show how informative selection may induce a different dependence among selected units and how the sample distribution differs from the population distribution.