Weighting underrepresented groups by large factors (5-10x for some groups) drastically inflates variability: with a weight of 10 in a sample of 1,000, a single miscoded respondent shifts the whole sample by 1%, so a single error can destroy a nominal 3% margin of error.

causalpending

Speaker

Doug Rivers

Evidence Quote

if you have a weight of ten and a sample of a thousand that means one person is representing ten people if that one person's answer is recorded incorrectly it moves the whole sample by one percent and that will obviously kill your margin of error

Source

Doug Rivers on polling 7/21/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:54 AM

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