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Re: AHS Codebook Suggestion

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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@hudus
er.org To: Scott.J.Susin@census.gov
cc:
06/25/2003 02:13 Subject: AHS Codebook Suggestion
PM
Please respond to
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://dataferrett.census.gov/

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/archive.prl?study=2625&path=ICPSR&allflag=ope

n

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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