Understanding Society User Support

Dear Understanding Society.

I'm having trouble working out which survey weights to use for my empirical analysis.

I'm looking at the association between parental non-standard work schedules and adolescent risky health related behaviours.

Due to the above research question, my sample is restricted to adolescents who completed the self-completion questionnaire in waves 2 and 4, which I have merged with the respective 'indresp' datasets I order to gather background family information etc.

I've read the relevant sections in the user guide pdf I found on the website, but still can't work out which weights I should use!

I assume I need to use longitudinal weights (even if my analysis is only two periods), but can't find appropriate one for the child self-completion (as this is the 'lowest' level of analysis)

I searched this forum prior to sending this email, and found Support #563 ('Weights when using the youth panel'), which has a similar problem.

Should I also use the longitudinal full adult response weight from the second wave of analysis? (in my case the 4th wave)

Or is there a more appropriate wave for my research question?

Best wishes,

Tom Robinson

Health Economics PhD Student, Newcastle University