# How to interpret certain results

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-to-interpret-certain-results/4129>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [May 12, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-to-interpret-certain-results/4129 "2021-05-12T17:22:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sb100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@sb100](https://forum.ipums.org/u/sb100)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-to-interpret-certain-results/4129/1 "2021-05-12T17:23:00Z")

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Hi. My question may be rather rudimentary.

Take a table like this:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/ipums/original/1X/95e622183fd77f7632e2ca5c1e5e8775ab13b6bd.png)

The entire US population in 2019 was (per google) 328.2 million. The sum of the entire right-hand column pictured above doesn’t surpass 4.5 million. I see “codes and frequencies” – is the right column just iterating the number of respondents to this question of the questionnaire?

And if so, is there a way to get from here to a table that shows, say, the estimated _percentages_ of all of the US population for each of these labels (or something similar)? (I know I could divide by the total myself, but this is just one finding example, and I am also supposing there may already be such tables or ways to make such tables within the site.)

And how would I begin to look at these kinds of numbers at smaller geographies?

Thank you!

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**Author:** ![KariWilliams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@KariWilliams](https://forum.ipums.org/u/KariWilliams)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2021, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-to-interpret-certain-results/4129/2 "2021-05-13T13:48:05Z")

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You are correct that the frequencies listed on the “Codes” tab is the unweighted count of the responses for a given sample. To get representative counts or percentages you need to apply [sample weights](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/intro.shtml#weights). IPUMS USA provides an [online tabulator](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/sda/) that you can use to generate these estimates; I am linking a [brief video tutorial](https://youtu.be/_s0H4uttjK8) on using the tabulator as well as some [sample exercises](https://ipums.org/support/exercises) (see the Online/SDA Exercises column for USA) that will walk you through how to use the tabulator. Alternatively, if you are interested purely in tabular data, you may prefer to use [IPUMS NHGIS](http://nhgis.ipums.org/), which provides summary file data from the Census Bureau and allows for identification of much smaller geographic units than the individual-level microdata from IPUMS USA.