Understanding Society User Support

Hello,

I am looking to use information on new parents (newmum/newdad), specifically dates of leave taken when child was born, in a difference in difference approach around the shared parental leave reform (2015).

Essentially, I will be comparing cohorts of parents who had a child before & after the reform. I will not be following specific parents longitudinally, at least not for the first part of the project.

I would like to run this analysis in calendar years, not waves, given that the reform happened in April 2015 & I will be comparing those with children born pre-April 2015 and post.

I have pooled waves 2-12 data and set this up in a long format. Now I am wondering what weights to apply.

1) Am I correct in thinking in this scenario cross-sectional weights will work? I would like to preserve as big a sample as possible as even without weighting sample size is a challenge.

2) If I can use cross-sectional weights, how can I apply them to this pooled data file, which includes waves 2-12? It is not clear to me from the user guide.

3) At which stage do I adjust for the calendar year analysis?

Thank you.