Dynamic Weighting of Panel Data

一般情况虽然情况并非总是如此，但调查通常用于使用相对较小的样本对较大的人口进行推断。 为了做到这一点，调查中的每个受访者都被赋予了一个权重，以描述调查中与他们相似的个人相对于人口的比例之间的关系。 这些权重的构建至关重要，因为它们确保调查样本能够准确反映人口。 这个项目开发了一个工具，供用户估计权重的几个最常用的小组调查在政治学。 通过使研究人员能够估计适合他们个人研究问题的权重，我们增加了使用这些小组调查的研究的可靠性。 由于面板加权涉及的问题，我们开发了一个R包，提供了一个单一的权重变量的基础上获得的子样本后，流失和项目无响应。 创建这样一个统计软件包背后的动机是需要一个工具，可以提供一套权重，适合研究人员根据结果变量，协变量和指定的波所需的分析。此外，我们开发的程序运行的社会人口特征的诊断后，占自然减员和项目的非响应，以标志潜在的并发症，如超重的受访者属于高水平的自然减员的群体。最后，我们生成了一个方便和用户友好的程序，便于分析面板调查数据。 无数学者依靠具有国家代表性和公开可用的小组调查作为数据来源，以推断国家意见。 该项目通过为研究人员提供适当加权数据所需的工具来改进这些推断。

GeneralAlthough it is not always the case, surveys are generally used to make inferences about a larger population using a relatively small sample. In order to do that, each respondent in a survey is given a weight to describe the relationship between the proportion of individuals like them in the survey relative to those in the population. The construction of these weights is critically important as they ensure the survey sample can accurately reflect the population. This project develops a tool for users to estimate weights for several of the most commonly used panel surveys in political science. By enabling researchers to estimate weights that are appropriate for their individual research questions, we increase the reliability of studies that use these panel surveys. TechnicalBecause of the issues that panel weighting involves, we develop an R package that delivers a single weight variable based on the sub-samples obtained after attrition and item non-response. The motivation behind the creation of such a statistical package is the need for a tool that can deliver a set of weights suitable for the analyses desired by researchers dependent on the outcome variables, covariates and waves specified. Moreover, we develop program to run a diagnosis of the socio-demographic characteristics of the remaining sample after accounting for attrition and item non-response in order to flag potential complications such as over-weight of respondents that belong to groups with high levels of attrition. Finally, we generate an accessible and user-friendly program that facilitates the analysis of panel survey data. Countless scholars rely upon nationally-representative and publicly-available panel surveys as a data resource to draw inferences about national opinion. This project improves those inferences by providing researchers with the tools they need to weight their data appropriately.