An improved version of systematic sampling design for use with linear trend data

In survey sampling, systematic sampling design has attracted survey researchers in recent years due to its simplicity of use. We introduce a modified variant of systematic sampling scheme which improves the efficiency of a recently developed diagonal systematic sampling method. The suggested modification is also found to be more efficient than the other popular sampling designs in circumstances where the units of the population under consideration exhibit an increasing or decreasing perfect or near-perfect linear trend. Moreover, it is observed that the conditions for efficiency are mathematically strong and practically always hold, hence making the suggested sampling design preferable over the available sampling designs.