Barbara Hamilton wrote:
[...]
> would my standard error estimates be compromised as Winship and Radbill
> noted back then, or does pweight now correct for any problems with these
> estimates brought about by the act of weighting?
Without pretending that I can demonstrate this algebraically (over and
above what you've already found in the Stata manuals and on-line help),
the use of -pweight-s act to correct for any sample selection biases that
may arise from your data.
> Also, can anyone point me to any documentation as to exactly what/how
> pweights are applies. For example, I know that fweights are analogous
> to running an unweighted regression on a dataset that has the correct
> number of observation replications denoted by the fweight. However, I
> don't have a concept in my head of how pweights are actually
> applied...that is, can anyone briefly state a conceptualization such as
> the one I made above about pweights, or does anyone have access to
> technicalities/formulas about how pweights are applied?
Normally, probability weights weight all observations in a dataset by
producing -pweight-s equal to 1/(probability of selection) (although you
can change this to whatever you think is appropriate). So, if a black,
middle-class male living in the South of England has only a probability of
being selected for a UK political opinion survey of 0.05, his -pweight- is
(1/0.05) = 20.
The Winship and Radbill (1994) paper that you refer to strongly recommends
the use of the DuMouchel-Duncan (1983) F test to test the significance of
the impact of sampling weights on estimation results. Ben Jann has
implemented this post-estimation test for Stata with the -wgttest-
package. You can download this from SSC:
. ssc desc wgttest
. ssc inst wgttest
Hope all that helps.
CLIVE NICHOLAS |t: 0(044)7903 397793
Politics |e: [email protected]
Newcastle University |http://www.ncl.ac.uk/geps
DuMouchel WH and Duncan GJ (1983) "Using Sample Survey Weights in Multiple
Regression Analysis" J AMER STAT ASSOC 78(383): 535-43.
Winship C and Radbill L (1994) "Sampling Weights and Regression Analysis"
SOCIOLOGICAL METHODS AND RESEARCH 23(2): 230-57
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