# IPUMS INTERNATIONAL: Will PERWT make sample representative on national level or also on regional level?

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/ipums-international-will-perwt-make-sample-representative-on-national-level-or-also-on-regional-level/1183>\
**Category:** INTERNATIONAL\
**Created:** [January 23, 2016, 8:30pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/ipums-international-will-perwt-make-sample-representative-on-national-level-or-also-on-regional-level/1183 "2016-01-23T20:30:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![fpeck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dec6dc/32.png) [@fpeck](https://forum.ipums.org/u/fpeck)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 8:30pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/ipums-international-will-perwt-make-sample-representative-on-national-level-or-also-on-regional-level/1183/1 "2016-01-23T20:30:00Z")

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I am using IPUMS International to look into local labour markets. Will the weighting variable PERWT make a given sample representative for the national level or also on the regional level? I.e. if I weight all observations from region X by PERWT and then compute statistics are they representative of that region?

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**Author:** ![grover](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/grover/32/5_2.png) [@grover](https://forum.ipums.org/u/grover)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2016, 3:28pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/ipums-international-will-perwt-make-sample-representative-on-national-level-or-also-on-regional-level/1183/2 "2016-01-27T15:28:00Z")

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The sampling procedure by which IPUMS-International samples are drawn creates an implicit geographic stratification which makes the samples representative at sub-national levels. I would recommend reading through the [Sampling Error and Variance Estimation](https://international.ipums.org/international/variance_estimation.shtml) for a more complete discussion of the subject.

I hope this helps.