We want to create a variable that tells us if one or more members of a household meet a specific set of age and sex criteria. The results would be households where 1 indicates that one or more members meet the criteria and 0 indicates that none of the members meet the criteria.
Can this be done by recoding data with the on-line tool and if not what software is recommended?
Unfortunately, the online data analysis system cannot create variables based on the characteristics of multiple records. You will need to use statistical software to perform this analysis, unless your data extract is small enough to open in Excel. We generate command files with each data extract that can be used to read IPUMS data into Stata, SAS, or SPSS. Many of our users also use R, which is a free open-source project (see this document for more information on using IPUMS data in R).
Hope this helps.