Subject: Re: st: Using the 2008 American National Election Study with Stata v.11
Thanks, Richard. I've been looking through the SVY manual, but what the ANES dataset provides are individual weighting variables (post estimation weights centered on zero, as described in the paper you pointed me to. I agree that it would be nice for ANES to be more specific about how to use Stata well with the dataset.
At 04:20 PM 10/14/2009, Peter Wielhouwer wrote:
>Is anyone familiar with using the 2008 NES with Stata? I have two
>specific questions:
>
>1. Which weight command is most appropriate for the data? Based on the
>Stata UG, it seems that the -iweight- syntax is most appropriate, but is
>that correct?
I am not familiar with the data set, but I would be amazed if
iweights were the way to go. My guess is you want pweights. googling
around found this recent paper:
ftp://ftp.electionstudies.org/ftp/nes/bibliography/documents/nes012427.pdf
If you google around some more though, maybe you can find something
easier to wade through; it is nice when a data set explicitly tells
you how to set the weights in Stata.
>2. In the ANES 2008 user guide, we are advised, "due to the complex
>sample design of the ANES, sampling errors and related statistics
>(including confidence intervals, p-values, t-tests, and all other tests
>of statistical significance) should not be calculated using methods
>intended for simple random samples." In light of this, which would be
>the appropriate statistics to use in Stata?
I think the correct question is not what statistics should I use, but
what statistical methods should I use to get the correct
statistics. Since you have Stata 11, you should also have the SVY
manual available in pdf form. Just click help/ PDF
documentation. If bookmarks are open then on the left hand side
you'll see the svy manual. After you've gone over the opening
explanatory material, the section on svy estimation will highlight
the many commands you have available. You'll probably want commands
like svy: tabulation, svy: mean, svy: regress, svy: logit, etc.
- -------------------------------------------
Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peter W. Wielhouwer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Political Science
Western Michigan University
Executive Director, Southwestern Social Science Association
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