The impact of transformations on the performance of variance estimators of finite population under adaptive cluster sampling with application to ecological data

This paper aims to investigate the impact of transformed auxiliary variables on the performance of variance estimators of finite population under adaptive cluster sampling scheme. Further, the formulation of an efficient variance estimator of a finite population is also under consideration in this article. Specifically, we explore the gain in efficiency obtained through various transformations and define dominance space for each transformation. These dominance regions provide valuable insights into the circumstances under which one transformation prevails over another regarding precision and accuracy. The theoretical properties of the suggested estimators have been discussed along with the dominance region under each transformation. The bias and Mean Square Error (MSE) have been derived up to the first order of approximation. To evaluate and empirically validate our methodology, we conduct a numerical analysis using real-life ecological data of blue-winged teal. The finding reflects the superior performance of the suggested variance estimators over the competing estimators, thereby substantiating its importance in making informed decisions in real-world applications.