Race and Ethnicity for a particular occupation

CPS
1

Hello, I am looking for detailed race and ethnicity information for women in a particular occupation set. However the data that i have procured do not add up so i can not figure out percentages. How should I go about doing this? Thanks!

2

In order for the data to add up to population totals, you need to use weights. The basic person-level weight in CPS is WTFINL. The person-level weight for ASEC (March supplement) is ASECWT. Any statistical software package will allow you to calculate proportions using weights.

3

thanks so much for getting back to me! Is there a way I can do this using the IPUMS online analyser?

4

Yes, using the online analyser (SDA), you can automatically incorporate weights. Under the Row, Column, etc. fields, there is a drop-down menu that says “Weight”. For the variables you are interested in, you want to use SDAWT. Note that you can select specific years using the Filter field. For example you could put: year(2010) to choose only 2010 data. If you use multiple years, the population totals will be incorrect (two years will give double the population). So that might have been your original problem.

5

thank you! are there any tips about how to correctly analyse data by the races provided and by hispanic ethnicity? particularly to accurately show percentages?

6

Proposed answer:

There are options to produce row, column and overall percentages in the “Table Options” box. See the attached screenshot.

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