Estimating model parameters from a complex survey under a model-design randomization framework

When an analyst faces the problem of estimating model parameters to data from a complex survey,one of the first questions he often asks is whether or not to use the survey weights. the appropriate question to ask,however,is whether the survey design information itself is relevant,and if so,how should it be incorporated in the analysis. the debate between the design-based and the model-based schools for making inferences on model parameters can be explained and clarified using a model-design randomization framework to describe how the observations for the sampled units have been obtained. © 2011 pakistan journal of statistics.