RE: st: Combining a survey weight and a frequency weight

["Radwin, David" <dradwin@rti.org>]

Please note that the FAQ asks you to mention authors and locations of user-written programs (-psmatch2- is by Edwin Leuven and Barbara Sianesi and is available from SSC).

Although the weight variable in -psmatch2- does represent a frequency, it is not a frequency weight in the sense of Stata's -fweight-. I would not describe it as representing "how important the observation is." 

Here is the description in the program's help file:


   psmatch2 creates a number of variables for the convenience of the user . . . . 
        _weight. For nearest neighbor matching, it holds the frequency with which the observation is
        used as a match; with option ties and k-nearest neighbors matching it holds the normalized
        weight; for kernel matching, and llr matching with a weight other than stata's tricube, it
        stores the overall weight given to the matched observation. When estimating att only _weight =
        1 for the treated.


In other words, I don't think you should try to use this variable as a measure of importance.

David
--
David Radwin
Senior Research Associate
Education Studies Division
RTI International
2150 Shattuck Ave., Suite 800
Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: 510-665-8274

www.rti.org


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-
> statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of James Jensen
> Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 6:49 AM
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: st: Combining a survey weight and a frequency weight
> 
> I would like to add that the frequency weight is generated by propensity
> score matching by the psmatch2 command. I found out earlier that this
> weight is a frequency weight that is to tell how important Stata how
> important the matched observation is.
> 
> I would like to combine this frequency weight and the survey weight when I
> carry out the analysis on the matched sub-sample.
> 
> But I am not sure what the weight type should be.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: James Jensen <jamesjensen212@yahoo.com>
> To: "statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu" <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
> Cc:
> Sent: Saturday, 24 August 2013, 14:35
> Subject: st: Combining a survey weight and a frequency weight
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I have a survey weight that accounts for the non-response rates of the
> given observations, and the weights sum to the population total.
> 
> I have also a frequency weight that is given in the Dataset to tell Stata
> how important the observation is.
> 
> If I want to combine these two weights into one single weight by
> multiplying them together, what will the weight type become? Is it going
> to be a frequency weight or a probability weight.

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