Hi, I am using the IPUMS USA data and was facing a question regarding the sampling weights. The description of the PERWT variable says that there are two implied decimals. Does that imply that one needs to divide the PERWT variable first by 100, or apply any other transformation to what is available, and then apply them? Thank you
If you download your extract as a preformatted data file (for SPSS, Stata, etc.), this adjustment has already been done. Also, if you download your extract as a fixed-width text file and load it into your statistical package using the command files available on the extract download page, the command files automatically perform this adjustment. So you shouldn’t have to worry about dividing by 100.