AHS: National Table Specs, Metro Topcodes

From: American Housing Survey (AHS) ListServ <ahs@huduser.gov>

The American Housing Survey web pages at huduser.gov have been updated with the table specification code for the 2009 national survey and the topcode files for the 2009 New Orleans and Seattle surveys.

Table Specification Code: This is the SAS code that the Census Bureau used to generate the tabulations that appear in the printed report and on the Census web site. We provide the code so that microdata users can match the Census specifications when generating their own tables. The zip archive contains two code files: One is a SAS program to generate all of the recodes and special variables used in the tables. The other program generates the tables themselves. Note that, unlike previous versions of the table specification code, this one is based on SAS PROC SQL for most of the table generation.

You can download the zip file from the 2009 national data page: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html.

Topcode Files: In order to protect the confidentiality of the respondents, extremely high (and, for a few variables, extremely low) values are not shown in the AHS public use files. Instead, these values are replaced by topcode values, which are usually the means of the values in the topcoded range. These files are Excel spreadsheets that document which variables are topcoded and what values you will observe in the public use files.

You can download these spreadsheets from the appropriate data pages for the New Orleans and Seattle surveys:

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html

You can download a document explaining the Census Bureau's topcoding techniques from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs/AHS_Public_Use_Files.pdf.

Dav Vandenbroucke
Senior Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david.a.vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-402-5890

I disclaim any disclaimers.