Estimating population size from multiple lists

Abstract:  The Rasch model is adopted to estimate the unknown population size in multi-list surveillance studies (disease, drug abuse, etc.). It takes both the list effectiveness and case heterogeneity into account. A stepwise approach is proposed in which optimization problems are solved conveniently. The sharpest lower bound to the odds that a case is unseen is introduced, which can be calculated by linear programming. There are also some less sharp lower bounds. Estimating a lower bound leads to an estimator for the population size. Real examples are investigated.

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