Understanding Society User Support

Dear Ante,

Apologies for the slow response to this issue. Our weighting team have been on annual leave and will respond when they return.

Best wishes,
Stephanie

Dear Ante,

1) You can use household weight if you have information for everyone in the household (if the information comes from hhresp or indall) and this information is averaged. Essentially you will have one value per household then - so household weight is appropriate. Nevertheless if the information comes from not all individuals in the household (e.g. from indresp file) then you must use individual level weights.
2) We believe that households are not longitudinal entities as they change over time.

Hope this helps,
Olena

Dear Olena,

Thank you for the clarification.

I have one more question related to weights. In the User Manual it writes that weights "... adjust for unequal selection probabilities(1), differential nonresponse(2), and potential sampling error(3). A weighted analysis will adjust for the higher sampling fraction in Northern Ireland and for different probabilities of selection in the EMB sample, as well as for response rate differences between subgroups of the sample."

I understand that
"higher sampling fraction in Northern Ireland" refers to (1),
"different probabilities of selection in the EMB sample" refers also to (1),
"response rate differences between subgroups of the sample" refers to (2).

Is this understanding correct? If so, what does sampling error (3) exactly refer to since I understand that not accounting for (1) and (2) can lead to (3)?

Best regards,
Ante

Ante,

Yes, your understanding is correct. And the sampling error refers to the point that there is a small chance that the selected sample may not be representative of the population - so the weights correct for this through post stratification.

Hope this helps,
Olena

Dear Olena,

Thank you for your clarifications.

Best regards,
Ante