Skip to main content

AHS Codebook and Data Dictionary Updated

HUD.GOV HUDUser.gov
eList
AHS

The codebook and data dictionary for the American Housing
Survey have been updated to cover all the new variables in
the 2005 dataset. The documents are available for download
from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html .

The codebook is the main reference for users of AHS data
files, covering the survey from 1997 forwards. It is a
large PDF file that contains information about each
variable, plus commentaries and appendices on such topics
as linking files, allocation, universe exclusions, and so
on. It runs over a thousand pages when printed, but many people prefer to consult it using Adobe Acrobat Reader's
find function. One tip that you may find useful is that
the variable definition pages all begin with the variable
name followed by a space and an equal sign. Thus, to go
directly to the definition of the TENURE variable, you
should do a find for TENURE =. That will skip all the
other references to tenure in the text.

The data dictionary is a text file derived from the
codebook. It contains just the information about variable
definitions, without the additional material. We provide
it because some users prefer this stripped-down format.

Note that both the code book and data dictionary apply to
both the SAS and ASCII versions of the AHS datasets. The
phrase "ASCII data dictionary" indicates that the
_dictionary_ is in ASCII format, not that it applies only to
the ASCII dataset.

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