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Design implications of anticipated data uses for comprehensive environmental monitoring programmes

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Abstract

Comprehensive environmental monitoring programmes must be designed to accommodate multiple objectives and public use of the data. Typically these programmes will involve both descriptive and analytic objectives, but surveys optimally designed with description as the principal objective may be inadequate for analytic objectives as well as secondary descriptive objectives. Survey design should adequately accommodate all identified objectives and intended data uses, not just the primary ones. Additionally, choice of design is influenced by intended users of the data. Complex survey designs often require complex computational formulae or statistical protocols, and data openly available to the public are subject to misuse if the design is such that generally used common data analyses are not appropriate. For those users under the authority of the agency responsible for the survey, it may be possible to prescribe exact analytic protocols and prohibit certain improper data uses; public data use cannot be so regulated. These problems may be minimized by employing an equal probability sampling design with limited stratification, and by eliminating design features that impose strong patterns, such as clusters.

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Overton, W.S., Stehman, S.V. Design implications of anticipated data uses for comprehensive environmental monitoring programmes. Environ Ecol Stat 2, 287–303 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00569359

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