Re: SV: SV: st: svy jackknife problems

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 03:43 AM 3/15/2006, you wrote:
> Thanks Nick, this was also helful. I particularly like the advice to 
> use -aweigth- to get the correct point estimates for the correlation 
> coefficient with survey data. This should be public knowledge! 
> Frankly speaking I never quite figured out why Stata needs to make 
> these distinctions between different types of weight variables. It 
> is very confusing, and I can't remember having this problem when 
> using SAS or SPSS, so is it really necessary?
That is because SPSS weighting is terrible!  Basically, it is limited 
to fweights/iweights.  The SPSS documentation even says "If the 
weighted number of cases exceeds the sample size, tests of 
significance are inflated; if it is smaller, they are 
deflated."  Stata has a huge edge in this respect.  Sure, Stata is 
confusing, but it is confusing because you have to choose the correct 
option from several choices, whereas with SPSS all you have to do is 
pick the single (often incorrect) option that is offered!


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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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