Hi everyone,
I am carrying out a cross-sectional multi-country analysis of MICS datasets, and one of them is Argentina (2019-2020). The population of interest is children under 5 and so far I have only used the children under 5 dataset (ch.sav) and the household members dataset (hl.sav)
For the rest of my countries, I used svyset, like so, using the variable HH6 (Area) as strata:
svyset HH1 [pweight= chweight], strata(HH6) singleunit(certainty)
HH6 is the Area variable, which divides the sample into Rural, Urban, Rural Coastal etc.
The issue I am running into is that the Argentina dataset has no HH6 variable, and has no other similar variable that divides the sample into these categories. It has a Region variable, and a PSU, but neither of these are similar to the Area variable.
Am I missing the Area variable, and it is in fact available in this dataset, or is there another variable I can use for svyset in its place?
Thank you very much in advance for your help!
The correct svyset command for estimates will depend on that particular survey’s sampling method and the specific analysis that you want to run. Generally, the correct strata variable to use with IPUMS MICS is IMICSSTRATUM and the correct PSU variable is IMICSPSU; both are available for the Argentina 2019 sample on the household characteristics unit of analysis record. This Linking Guide explains how to merge the data from the household characteristics unit (HH) onto the files with child and household member records.
Since the primary sampling unit is generally the same as the sampling cluster, IMICSCLUSTER can be used in place of IMICSPSU when the latter is unavailable. Note that IMICSSTRUM is identical to STRATUM except in that it combines the unique sample identifier SAMPLE such that the strata values are unique even when you have pooled multiple samples together. The same is true for IMICSPSU/PSU and IMICSCLUSTER/CLUSTER. I am not finding any documentation suggesting to use HH6 (URBAN) for your strata. The Designing and Selecting the Sample guide available on the MICS4 tools page might be helpful in familiarizing yourself with the general sampling procedure for the MICS surveys.