Confidence intervals for population size based on a capture-recapture design

Date

2011-11-21

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Kansas State University

Abstract

Capture-Recaputre (CR) experiments stemmed from the study of wildlife and are widely used in areas such as ecology, epidemiology, evaluation of census undercounts, and software testing, to estimate population size, survival rate, and other population parameters. The basic idea of the design is to use “overlapping” information contained in multiple samples from the population. In this report, we focus on the simplest form of Capture-Recapture experiments, namely, a two-sample Capture-Recapture design, which is conventionally called the “Petersen Method.” We study and compare the performance of three methods of constructing confidence intervals for the population size based on a Capture-Recapture design, asymptotic normality estimation, Chapman estimation, and “inverting a chi-square test” estimation, in terms of coverage rate and mean interval width. Simulation studies are carried out and analyzed using R and SAS. It turns out that the “inverting a chi-square test” estimation is better than the other two methods. A possible solution to the “zero recapture” problem is put forward. We find that if population size is at least a few thousand, two-sample CR estimation provides reasonable estimates of the population size.

Description

Keywords

Capture-recapture, Confidence interval, Population size, Asymptotic normality estimation, Inverting a test, Coverage rate

Graduation Month

December

Degree

Master of Science

Department

Department of Statistics

Major Professor

Paul I. Nelson

Date

2011

Type

Report

Citation