Understanding Society User Support

Understanding Society User Support Team wrote in #note-2:

Hello,

Thanks for highlighting this issue.

We have checked and in each wave there are around 1-2k cases where bw_eq_moecd_dv does not match the values of the variable you get if you used the syntax provided for creating w_ieqmoecd_dv, after rounding both variables. The rest match. These are almost all cases where bw_eq_moecd_dv was missing but the newly created variable had valid values. The variables bw_eq_moecd_dv were historically derived. We have passed on this information to the data team.

Until the harmonised version is released we suggest you re-run the syntax for w_ieqmoced_dv to create the same for the BHPS waves after replace w_age_dv with bw_age.

Hope this helps.
Understanding Society User Support Team

Marek Rojicek wrote:

Hi,

I have been working the OECD equivalence scale variables in BHPS and USoc (variables eq_moecd and ieqmoecd_dv respectively) and in trying to understand how these variables were constructed, I tried recreating them as per the description provided for ieqmoecd_dv (https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/dataset-documentation/variable/ieqmoecd_dv). I was able to exactly replicate it for USoc using the age_dv variable in the indall data, outside of a handful of cases where the variable doby_dv does not equal to birthy.

However for BHPS, using the age variable in the indall data, there are a significant number of cases where the recreated OECD equivalence scale does not equal to the provided eq_moecd variable. There are 22,884 cases across all BHPS waves where the eq_moecd variable is provided as missing, despite ages being available for all members of the household in the indall data (examples of this are e.g. hidp 10883 and 5977883). There are then a further 195 cases where the eq_moecd variable is seemingly incorrect when compared to the household composition (examples of this are e.g. hidp 30069608 and 3175608).

Would you please be able to check these? I've been using my recreated OECD equivalence scale variable for now - but it would be good to understand if I misunderstood the derivation for BHPS (as I couldn't find exact documentation for BHPS).

Thank you,

Marek

Understanding Society User Support Team wrote in #note-2:

Hello,

Thanks for highlighting this issue.

We have checked and in each wave there are around 1-2k cases where bw_eq_moecd_dv does not match the values of the variable you get if you used the syntax provided for creating w_ieqmoecd_dv, after rounding both variables. The rest match. These are almost all cases where bw_eq_moecd_dv was missing but the newly created variable had valid values. The variables bw_eq_moecd_dv were historically derived. We have passed on this information to the data team.

Until the harmonised version is released we suggest you re-run the syntax for w_ieqmoced_dv to create the same for the BHPS waves after replace w_age_dv with bw_age.

Hope this helps.
Understanding Society User Support Team

Hi,

Thank you very much for checking this and confirming! As you suggest, for now I'll re-create the variable using the w_ieqmoced_dv logic.

Thank you again,

Marek