What is SERIAL in ATUS?

TIME USE
1

In the documentation, it says that SERIAL is unique in ATUS households, but it looks like that isn’t the case.

What exactly is SERIAL in the ATUS data? Is it something that should be used at all for identifying purposes, or should I only use CASEID (which does indeed seem to be unique).

(I am using the hierarchical data, BTW.)

Thanks!

Gretchen

2

SERIAL should be a unique identifier as the documentation states. However, it appears that there is currently an issue with SERIAL for hierarchical extracts in IPUMS ATUS. We are working on addressing this. In the meantime, you can use CASEID as a unique identifier.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.