Estimation of finite population parameters with auxiliary information and response error.

We use a finite population mixed model that accommodates response error in the survey variable of interest and auxiliary information to obtain optimal estimators of population parameters from data collected via simple random sampling. We illustrate the method with the estimation of a regression coefficient and conduct a simulation study to compare the performance of the empirical version of the proposed estimator (obtained by replacing variance components with estimates) with that of the least squares estimator usually employed in such settings. The results suggest that when the auxiliary variable distribution is skewed, the proposed estimator has a smaller mean squared error.