The covariance matrix of the table cell frequency estimates is an matrix that contains the pairwise cell frequency covariances.
denotes the covariance matrix and
denotes the pairwise covariances, for
;
;
; and
.
PROC SURVEYFREQ estimates the covariances by using the variance estimation method that you request. If you request a replication method (bootstrap, BRR, jackknife, or replicate weights), the procedure estimates the covariances as described in the section Replication Variance Estimation.
By default, or if you request Taylor series variance estimation, PROC SURVEYFREQ estimates the covariance between frequency estimates for table cells (r,c) and (a,b) as