1998 Ohio Family Health Survey 
Survey Design Statements

Ohio Department of Health
Center for Public Health Data and Statistics

Specialized survey analysis software (such as SUDAAN, WESVAR, or STATA) is needed to calculate standard errors or confidence intervals because the Ohio Family Health Survey did not have a simple random sample design.  The survey design included stratification by counties and clustering within households.  Many common versions of standard spreadsheet and statistical software packages (such as EXCEL and SAS) should not be used to calculate variance because their formulas assume a simple random sample and do not allow users to input survey design statements.  Following are examples of design statements that may be used to appropriately calculate variance: 

NOTES:

1. The variable “employwt” should be used in place of “finalwt”, and the variable “estrata” should be used in place of “awgtcnty”, for analyses that involve the employment-related variables of hours worked, class of worker, industry, or size of employer.  See Redistribution of Weights for Missing Employment Data from the Ohio Family Health Survey, SH Woodard, Ph.D., Biostatistics Program, The Ohio State University, June 2000 for further details.    

2. For analyses combining adults and children, “awgtcnty” or “estrata” should be assigned to child observations through a merge with the adult data set using the “IDNO” variable. 

*** SUDAAN design statements  ***

***adult only;
design=strwr;
nest=awgtcnty;
weight finalwt;

*** children only;
design=strwr;
nest=kidcty;
weight kidwt;

*** adults and children;  
design=wr;
nest=awgtcnty idno;
weight [user defined variable including both adult weight (finalwt) and child weight (kidwt)];

*** STATA design statements ***

*** adult only
svyset pweight finalwt
svyset strata awgtcnty 

*** children only
svyset pweight kidwt
svyset strata kidcty

*** adults and children
svyset pweight  [user defined variable including both adult weight (finalwt) and child weight (kidwt) ];
svyset strata awgtcnty
svyset psu idno