AHS Digest

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Here are the AHS Digest messages:


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From: "Sandra J. Newman" <sjn@jhu.edu> on 6/28/2003 6:16:53 PM
Subject: Re: AHS Codebook Suggestion

Dear All:

A dictionary would be extremely helpful. Thanks, Scott.

Sandee


At 07:57 PM 06/26/2003 -0400, ahslistserv@huduser.gov wrote:
>From: American Housing Survey (AHS) ListServ <ahs@huduser.gov>
>
>
>
>Dav has summed up pretty well what I am suggesting. I thought I would just
>add an example. I am proposing that in addition to the current codebook,
>we put out a data dictionary file showing just the variables and value
>labels, as is done for other Census Bureau surveys. As an example, for one
>variable, the data dictionary (from the SIPP data set) contains:
>
>D EUNITS 1 82
>T HH: Number of housing units
> How many housing units, both occupied and
> vacant, are there in this structure?
>U All persons
>V 1 .One, detached
>V 2 .One, attached
>V 3 .Two
>V 4 .3:4
>V 5 .5-9
>V 6 .10-19
>V 7 .20-49
>V 8 .50 or more
>
>
>
>ahslistserv@huduser.gov
>To:Scott.J.Susin@census.gov
>cc:
>06/25/2003 02:13 PM
>Subject: AHS Codebook Suggestion
>
>david_a._vandenbroucke
>
>
>From: American Housing Survey (AHS) ListServ <ahs@huduser.gov>
>
>My call for comments on the codebook generated a suggestion from one of my AHS
>colleagues at the Census Bureau, Scott Susin. Scott feels that the current
>codebook is:
>
>* Confusing to new users
>* Difficult to search, since one gets too many "hits" while trying to find the
>definition of a variable.
>* Difficult to copy and paste from
>* Frustrating for programmers who just want to find the variable that covers a
>particular subject
>
>He suggests that in addition to the codebook, the AHS should have a data
>dictionary. This dictionary would simply list the variables, their subjects,
>and their coding. He further proposes that the dictionary would be a simple
>ASCII file, not a PDF.
>
>Examples of the sort of document that is being proposed can be found at:
>
>https://www.huduser.gov/portal/node/2294
>
>http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/archive.prl?study=2625&path=ICPSR&allflag=op
en
>
>In each case, just click on the links to the data dictionaries. These are
>fairly big text files.
>
>I am in the awkward position of asking for comments on a propsal whose purpose
>I don't entirely understand. I hope that Scott will jump in here and explain
>this proposal better than I can do at second hand. It may be that I no longer
>understand how difficult the AHS microdata files are for new users. Thus, I am
>particularly interested in comments from people who are either new to the AHS
>or who need to teach new users. Do you find the same problems with the
>codebook? Would a data dictionary help?
>
>As an alternative, we are considering reorganizing the current codebook to put
>the lists of variables (alphabetically and by subject) near the end of the
>document, so that doing a "find" in Acrobat Reader will more often hit the
>variable definition rather than the list entries. We may use a special
>character after the variable name (for example REGION *) to make it easier to
>search specifically for the definition. We also thought of adding a "how to
>use this codebook" section, but we wondered if anyone actually reads those.
>
>Dav Vandenbroucke
>Economist
>U.S. Dept. HUD
>david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
>202-708-1060 ext. 5890
>
>
>
>
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>
>
Sandra J. Newman, Ph.D.
Director
Professor of Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies
Johns Hopkins University
Wyman Park Building
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
(410) 516-4614 (phone)
(410) 516-8233 (fax)
*Please contact me for different street address if sending overnight mail.




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From: david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov on 6/30/2003 3:23:56 PM
Subject: AHS: Update to User Supplied Programs

I have added some files to the AHS user-supplied program archive. The new
files are SAS code files that will help you import datasets from the 1973-1993
national data files into SAS. You can download the archive from the HUD USER
web site, at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html

Below is a summary of all the programs currently in the archive. If you have
any programs that you would like to contribute, please contact me.

Dav Vandenbroucke
Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-708-1060 ext. 5890

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AHS2001INC.DCT, RD2001.DO
These two files can be used to read the 2001 income limits file into STATA.
The comments in AHS2001INC.DCT indicate that the same record layout can be
used for the 1997 and 1999 income limits files. [07/10/2002]

AHS85.SAS
A program to convert the HUD public use microdata file for the 1985
American Housing Survey (national sample) to a SAS dataset. See the
comments in the program file for details. THIS PROGRAM WORKS ONLY WITH THE
CD-ROM DATED FEBRUARY 1991.  Earlier CD-ROMS use different record layouts.
[03/24/2000]

AHS87.SAS
A program to convert the HUD public use microdata file for the 1995
American Housing Survey (national sample) to a SAS dataset. See the
comments in the program file for details. THIS PROGRAM WORKS WITH THE
NOVEMBER 1991 CD-ROM ONLY.  Earlier CD-ROMs use a different record
layout.[03/24/2000]

AHS89.SAS
A program to convert the HUD public use microdata file for the 1989
American Housing Survey (national sample) to a SAS dataset. See the
comments in the program file for details. NOTE:  THIS PROGRAM WORKS ONLY
WITH THE JUNE 1995 CD-ROM.  Earlier versions used a different record
layout. [03/24/2000]

AHS91.SAS
A program to convert the HUD public use microdata file for the
1991 American Housing Survey (national sample) to a SAS dataset.
See the comments in the program file for details. [03/24/2000,
revised 10/03/2002]

AHS93.SAS
A program to convert the HUD public use microdata file for the
1993 American Housing Survey (national sample) to a SAS dataset.
See the comments in the program file for details. [03/24/2000]

AHS9394MS.EXE
This file is itself a self-extracting zip archive.  It contains SAS
programs to set up the 1993 and 1994 metropolitan survey data from the CD-
ROM.

AHS95.SAS
A program to convert the HUD public use microdata file for the 1995
American Housing Survey (national sample) to a SAS dataset. See the
comments in the program file for details. [03/06/2000, revised 07/10/2002]

NAT73-93.EXE
This file is itself a self-extracting zip archive.  It contains two sets of
SAS code files to aid in importing the national datasets from 1973 to 1993
into SAS.  The files have these forms:

labYYa.sas:  Where "yy" is the year (for example, lab73a.sas).  These
files provide variable labels for the the variables in the
dataset in a given year.

natYYb.sas:  Where "yy" is the year (for example, nat73b.sas).  These
files provide the record layouts for each survey dataset, in a
form ready to be pasted into a SAS INPUT statement.

Note that the files in this archive are not ready-to-run SAS programs.  You
will still need to write a DATA step around them.  However, they do save
you the tedious parts of coding variable layouts and labels.  These files
were contributed by Scott Susin of the Census Bureau
(scott.j.susin@census.gov). [06/27/2003]


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