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AHS Codebook Suggestion

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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

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/node/2302 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=open

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