Relative Importance of Poverty and Education in Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Weighting Adjustment

• Activity Number: 665
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 4, 2011 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Sadeq R. Chowdhury*+ and Trena Ezzati-Rice
• Companies: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
• Keywords: MEPS ; nonresponse ; poststratification ; raking ; weighting

Abstract

In computing sampling weights for the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), base sampling weights are adjusted for nonresponse and under-coverage in various weighting steps including a final raking adjustment using selected demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The MEPS Full Year (FY) weight is released in two steps-a preliminary weight is released first with the FY Population Characteristics file, which is revised later for the final FY Consolidated file. The preliminary weight is produced without using poverty status in the raking adjustment as the poverty status variable is not available at that stage. The final weight is produced by adjusting for poverty status a few months later when the poverty status variable becomes available. This paper presents the results from research evaluating the impact of using education status of family reference person instead of family poverty status in the raking adjustment. Since education status is easy to derive and available early, the objective is to see if education status can be used to improve the preliminary FY weight or if education status can be used as an alternative to poverty status in producing the final FY weight.