Download User and methodological manual

Introduction
Mauss is a tool for defining the sampling design for sample surveys on finite
populations. It guarantees optimality criteria, flexibility and easy management for those
who have the responsibility to design and conduct such surveys.
It enables the user, once defined the objectives and the operational constraints of the
survey, to choose the best sampling design between those obtained by adopting different
definitions of the key features of the survey, such as the type of stratification, the
desired accuracy of the estimates, the sample size, the type of domains of study, the
variables of interest.
The use of this software also ensures transparency, standardization and accuracy of the
methods used.
The current version of Mauss is an evolution of previous applications, developed in
SAS. The design and development of these first versions is due to methodologists and
IT developers (including among the first Marco Ballin, Claudia De Vitiis, Piero
Demetrio Falorsi, Germana Scepi; in the second, together with Marco Ballin and Piero
Demetrio Falorsi, also Daniela Pagliuca, Paolo Floris and Roberto Di Giuseppe).
The decision to migrate the SAS version to R was taken as part of a strategy that tends
to reduce the dependence on proprietary software and to ensure full portability of the
tools developed by ISTAT. Moreover, new functions have been added, together with a
more advanced interface. The development of the version described in this manual is
due to Teresa Buglielli (Java interface for project management and execution modules),
Daniela Pagliuca (implementation of the methodology in R) and Giulio Barcaroli
(Chromy algorithm in Fortran).