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Home » Data » Weighting data » Why I am getting different total observations when using iweight for tabulating a variable
Re: Why I am getting different total observations when using iweight for tabulating a variable [message #26556 is a reply to message #26552] Fri, 31 March 2023 12:03 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3199
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from Senior DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

This is outside the scope of the forum but I'll suggest what MAY be going on. Two conventions regarding the normalization of weights may be in conflict. In the page you attached, the weights are normalized to add to one. That's one convention. However, with pweights (are you using pweights?) Stata automatically normalizes the weights to have a MEAN of 1. So far as I know, with pweights it is actually impossible to over-ride that. Stata does that so the weighted and unweighted totals will match, which is usually desirable from a sampling perspective.

I don't have time to do this, but if I did, I would go over the algebra of the fractional weights to confirm mathematically that the mean should be 0.5 under the first convention and then see what happens when a small set of maybe 10 numbers is analyzed with Stata.

Another option would be to ask one of the authors of the World Bank report. Sorry we can't be more helpful.
 
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