Codes

This is a 11-digit numeric variable.

Description

PARALWT is an IPUMS NHIS-constructed variable that harmonizes chronic paralysis prevalence factors for the person-level variable PARALANYNOWC for the years 1978-1996.

For 1978-1996, the survey question associated with PARALANYNOWC was asked of persons living in 1/3 of households. This is a contrast with most of the chronic condition variables from that period, which were asked of persons living in 1/6 of households. (The other exception to this rule, apart from PARALANYNOWC, is DIABETICYRC.)

To account for this larger universe, a special weight must be used when analyzing PARALANYNOWC for 1978-1996. For persons who are "in universe" for PARALANYNOWC, PARALWT is calculated in three steps:

• First, the variable CCFACT is divided by a multiple of 10 to insert a decimal point. Because the width of CCFACT changes across years, the divisor also changes. For 1978, CCFACT is divided by 1,000,000. For 1979-1981, CCFACT is divided by 100,000,000. For 1982-1996, CCFACT is divided by 1,000,000,000.

• Second, the resulting quotient is multiplied by PERWEIGHT.

• Third, the resulting product is divided by 2.

Persons who are considered "not in universe" (NIU) for PARALANYNOWC are given a weight of 0 in PARALWT.

Users should note that PARALANYNOWC must be weighted with PERWEIGHT, rather than PARALWT, in 1969, 1971, 1976, and 1977.

Comparability

There are no comparability issues with PARALWT.

Universe

Availability

• 1978-1996

Weights

• No weights are available for this variable. Please refer to PARALWT for more information.