All catch-effort estimation methods implicitly assume catch and effort are known quantities, whereas in many cases, they have been estimated and are subject to error. We evaluate the application of a simulation-based estimation procedure for measurement error models (J.R. Cook and L.A. Stefanski. 1994. J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 89: 1314-1328) in catch-effort studies. The technique involves a simulation component and an extrapolation step, hence the name SIMEX estimation. We describe SIMEX estimation in general terms and illustrate its use with applications to real and simulated catch and effort data. Correcting for measurement error with SIMEX estimation resulted in population size and catchability coefficient estimates that were substantially less than naive estimates, which ignored measurement errors in some cases. In a simulation of the procedure, we compared estimators from SIMEX with "naive" estimators that ignore measurement errors in catch and effort to determine the ability of SIMEX to produce bias-corrected estimates. The SIMEX estimators were less biased than the naive estimators but in some cases were also more variable. Despite the bias reduction, the SIMEX estimator had a larger mean squared error than the naive estimator for one of two artificial populations studied. However, our results suggest the SIMEX estimator may outperform the naive estimator in terms of bias and precision for larger populations.
Analysis of Gaussian Spatial Models with Covariate Measurement Error
