Notice: On April 23, 2014, Statalist moved from an email list to a forum, based at statalist.org.
From | Steve Samuels <sjsamuels@gmail.com> |
To | statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu |
Subject | Re: st: SVY medians and Elixhauser |
Date | Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:00:55 -0400 |
A rule of thumb quoted on page 143 of a UN document (below) is to round the standard error to two significant digits and then report that many digits in the main estimate. The Oxford Journals have this guideline: "Numbers in the articles and tables should be reported with no more precision than they merit. Careful thought, not computer packages or the need to align tables, should govern how many significant digits are reported. Remember that significant digits are not the same thing as the total number of digits reported. Do not report more significant digits than the standard errors suggest." Thus you are justified in reporting that the median is $37,200 with standard error $1,700. You would round the CIs in the same way. Steve References Designing Household Survey Samples: Practical Guidelines December, 2008 Series: Studies in Methods (Ser. F), No.98 Publisher: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/polana/for_authors/general.html On Apr 12, 2013, at 3:25 AM, Mike Butterfield wrote: Thanks Stas, I think I got it to work! So it looks like the median cost of a person with an infection is $37192, which I get from the second table. Could you clue me in to what's being described in the first table though? -Mike . epctile totchg, p(50) over(infection) svy speclab (running mean on estimation sample) ... Percentile estimation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Linearized totchg | Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| [95% Conf. Interval] -------------+---------------------------------------------------------------- p50_0 | 23533 626 37.59 0.000 22306.06 24759.94 p50_1 | 37192 1691 21.99 0.000 33877.7 40506.3 * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/ * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/