Systematic sampling is a minimum support design

In order to select a sample in a finite population of N units with given inclusion probabilities, it is possible to define a sampling design on at most N samples that have a positive probability of being selected. Designs defined on minimal sets of samples are called minimum support designs. It is shown that, for any vector of inclusion probabilities, systematic sampling always provides a minimum support design. This property makes it possible to extensively compute the sampling design and the joint inclusion probabilities. Random systematic sampling can be viewed as the random choice of a minimum support design. However, even if the population is randomly sorted, a simple example shows that some joint inclusion probabilities can be equal to zero. Another way of randomly selecting a minimum support design is proposed, in such a way that all the samples have a positive probability of being selected, and all the joint inclusion probabilities are positive. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.