Questionnaire Dwelling Unit-Level and Person Pair-Level Sampling ...

Table 6.1
Levels of the Variable PAIRREL (continued)
Value of
PAIRREL
Interpretation
Domain of
Interest?
24 The respondent is part of a pair that is not clearly identifiable, but it could Maybe
be pair codes 8, 9, or 12.
25 The respondent is part of a pair that is not clearly identifiable, but it could No
be pair codes 11 or 12.
99 The respondent is not a member of a pair. No
1 The pair relationship labeled "spouse-spouse" includes partner-partner pair relationships.
6.2.2.1 Matching the Household Rosters
To match the household rosters of the pair members, let the pair members be identified as
pair member "A" and pair member "B." For the household roster of pair member A, it was
necessary to determine which listed household member in A's roster corresponded to the other
selected pair member. The same had to be done for pair member B. This was accomplished using
the age and gender of the pair members, in addition to a variable (hereafter referred to as
MBRSEL) that was supposed to identify the roster member corresponding to the other selected
pair member. In a perfect setting, the questionnaire age and gender of pair member B (AGE and
IRSEX, respectively) would have corresponded exactly to the age and gender entered for one of
the members of pair member A's household roster (RAGE and RSEX). Moreover, the value of
MBRSEL for this roster member would have been 1, and the value of MBRSEL for all other
roster members would have been 0 or missing. Table 6.2 provides an explanation of values of
MBRSEL. In this perfect setting, exact matches with exactly one MBRSEL = 1 correctly
identifying the other pair member also would have been found with pair member B's roster. This
did not always occur, of course, so some effort was required to determine the roster member
most likely to correspond to the other selected pair member.
In fact, the quality of the match varied depending upon the quality of the roster entries
and the time between interviews. There are a number of if-then-else conditions, called priority
conditions (due to the hierarchical nature of the conditions), each of which gave a pair match that
was considered valid in the vast majority of cases. These conditions are provided in Appendix O.
In general, the conditions matched IRSEX and AGE for the one pair member against the age and
gender of the roster members in the other pair member's roster, using MBRSEL to help identify
the appropriate roster member. These conditions in general terms are provided in Table 6.2. It
was necessary that at least one of the two pair members have a match as good as that shown
below.
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