Modeling participation duration, with application to the North American Breeding Bird Survey
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Abstract
We consider “participation histories,” binary sequences consisting of alternating finite sequences of 1s and 0s, ending with an infinite sequence of 0s. Our work is motivated by a study of observer tenure in the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). In our analysis, j indexes an observer’s years of service and Xj is an indicator of participation in the survey; 0s interspersed among 1s correspond to years when observers did not participate, but subsequently returned to service. Of interest is the observer’s duration D = max {j: Xj = 1}. Because observed records X = (X1, X2,..., Xn)1 are of finite length, all that we can directly infer about duration is that D ⩾ max {j ⩽n: Xj = 1}; model-based analysis is required for inference about D. We propose models in which lengths of 0s and 1s sequences have distributions determined by the index j at which they begin; 0s sequences are infinite with positive probability, an estimable parameter. We found that BBS observers’ lengths of service vary greatly, with 25.3% participating for only a single year, 49.5% serving for 4 or fewer years, and an average duration of 8.7 years, producing an average of 7.7 counts.
Publication type | Article |
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Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
Title | Modeling participation duration, with application to the North American Breeding Bird Survey |
Series title | Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods |
DOI | 10.1080/03610926.2014.957854 |
Volume | 45 |
Issue | 21 |
Year Published | 2014 |
Language | English |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Publisher location | Philadelphia, PA |
Contributing office(s) | Patuxent Wildlife Research Center |
First page | 6311 |
Last page | 6320 |
Online Only (Y/N) | N |
Additional Online Files (Y/N) | N |
Google Analytic Metrics | Metrics page |