The variable EDPUPR is from the Current Population Survey Education Supplement. The Education Supplement has been fielded in October since 1968. Other CPS samples (i.e., samples that are not from October) do not include Education Supplement variables. Only the October samples that you include in your IPUMS CPS extract will have Education Supplement variables populated for the supplement respondents. You can see the list of samples in which each variable is available by clicking on the variable’s “availability” tab:The variable EDPUPR is from the Current Population Survey Education Supplement. The Education Supplement has been fielded in October since 1968. Other CPS samples (i.e., samples that are not from October) do not include Education Supplement variables. Only the October samples that you include in your IPUMS CPS extract will have Education Supplement variables populated for the supplement respondents. You can see the list of samples in which each variable is available by clicking on the variable’s “availability” tab:
IPUMS CPS provides data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), harmonized across time. The CPS is a short, interrupted monthly panel survey of U.S. households. Each CPS sample includes data from a single month. Each month, a new set of survey respondents enters the CPS. They are interviewed monthly for four consecutive months; then they are out of the survey for eight months; and then they re-enter the survey for four final months before exiting the survey. Thus, each CPS respondent can be observed up to eight times over a period of 16 calendar months. See this page on linking the CPS for more information about the CPS panel structure and rotation pattern.
The CPS includes the basic monthly survey (BMS), which is conducted every month. There are also supplements to the CPS, including the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), which is fielded yearly in March, as well as other topical supplements.
When analyzing sample data, including IPUMS CPS data, you must always apply sampling weights. For person-level analyses of Education Supplement variables, you should usually use EDSUPPWT. The weight ASECWT should be used for most person-level analyses of data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), which as I mentioned above, is fielded in March. ASECWT is not available in any samples that include the Education Supplement, and vice versa, since these supplements are fielded in different months. See this page for more information on CPS weights.
I noticed your most recent data extract includes a large number of samples that are not from October. These non-October samples, in which the Education Supplement was not fielded, will not have Education Supplement variables available. I also noticed that you removed the pre-selected variables from your extract. These variables, including MONTH, YEAR, and SERIAL, are critical in most analysis of CPS data. At minimum, most researchers need to know what month and year of the CPS each observation comes from (the survey month and year indicate whether the sample included the Education Supplement). SERIAL is a unique household identifier within each sample. I would strongly suggest including all of the pre-selected variables in your IPUMS extracts, as they provide important technical information.
I also noticed that your extracts are mostly in .csv format. If you are opening them in Excel, note that the row limit for Excel is about one million rows, which may be too few for some of your IPUMS CPS extracts.
You can use the select cases feature in the IPUMS extract system to restrict your data extract to only person or household records that meet certain criteria, e.g., only persons who fall within a specified age range. You can read more about the select cases feature in the IPUMS CPS FAQ.
You may find our data training exercises helpful as you get started using IPUMS data. These exercises are available for IPUMS CPS as well as our other data collections, and for many statistical software packages. If you would like to share more information about your work or the analysis you are hoping to conduct, I may be able to provide more useful guidance to you about IPUMS CPS variables, samples, and technical information.
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