Is there a resource available for how to interpret the Z-statistics provided by running an online query (in the IPUMS US SDA tool)? I see one August 2018 forum discussion that mentions this but refers to a documentation/help file no longer accessible through the link provided. I’ve tried searching in other ways for such a file but cannot locate one.
Thanks for any help with this!
The Z-statistics produced in the SDA are calculated based on expected frequencies (derived from a chi-square test), rather than based on standard errors. So, the Z-statistic in this case measures how far the observed frequency is from the expected frequency. You can read more about the statistics in each cell in SDA tables in this document.
The documentation previously provided on our site on the SDA tool (links beginning with https://sda.usa.ipums.org/helpfiles/) is now outdated, so many links you may find in old forum posts will not work. I recommend referencing the SDA’s website for up-to-date help documents.