Re: Merging Community file with individual recode file [message #9054 is a reply to message #9038] |
Tue, 02 February 2016 14:49  |
Reduced-For(u)m
Messages: 292 Registered: March 2013
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Senior Member |
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Can I analyze individual information with respect to the cluster? For example, if i were to examine association between birth weight and a specific community characteristic, could i do it using the merged file?
- This is something people definitely do, and what you describe would be the right dataset merge (note: I didn't check the merge variables, but the idea is right). The biggest issue is probably going to be how much variation you actually get in the cluster level measure: how many clusters and how much your X of interest varies. But there is no particular reason why you can't do this, it is just likely to be a little bit noisy.
Also, remember that the cluster level information you are getting comes from the time of the survey, which is not necessarily the time of birth, so if things are changing over time in the region you will have some measurement error problems that will be correlated with date of birth (the further back you go the less reliably well the information will actually match what the mother experienced during pregnancy/birth. Some variables this is more of a problem than others, but it is up to your judgment.
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