Re: st: Using the 2008 American National Election Study with Stata v.11

[Nick Winter <nwinter@virginia.edu>]

The ANES weights should be used as pweights.

In recent studies (eg, the 2004 dataset), ANES supplies a variable that 
indicates "strata" and "psus" that can be used for BRR or Taylor-series 
approaches to variance estimation.  (They don't release the complete 
sampling information to prevent possible identification of individual 
respondents -- this is discussed, eg, in the introductory materials for 
the 2004 study documentation: 
http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/2004prepost/nes04int.txt)

So until the final,complete release of the 2008 data, you are stuck with 
just using the appropriate pweight.

(As an aside, in my experience, taking proper account of the 
stratification and clustering in the ANES datasets has not had dramatic 
effects on standard errors.  But of course my prior experience doesn't 
guarantee your future performance....)

- NW

sjsamuels@gmail.com wrote:
> It states that "comprehensive instructions will accompany the full
> release of the Panel Study Data."
>
>   I'm not familiar with ANES, but neither the paper Bob found nor the
> user guide have anything about weights centered at zero. (The paper
> does recommend that weights be scaled so that they sum to 1.)  In
> fact, weights<0 would be rejected by any survey program.
>
>
> -Steve
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 6:07 AM, Peter Wielhouwer
> <peter.wielhouwer@wmich.edu> wrote:
> > 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
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Winter                                 434.924.6994 t
Assistant Professor                             434.924.3359 f
Department of Politics                  nwinter@virginia.edu e
University of Virginia          faculty.virginia.edu/nwinter w
PO Box 400787, 100 Cabell Hall
Charlottesville, VA 22904

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