Adult Literacy in America - National Center for Education Statistics ...

Weighting
older for the national component, 16 to 64 for the state component) was
constructed for each selected household. One person was selected at random
from households with fewer than four eligible members; two persons were
selected from households with four or more eligible members. The interviewers,
who were instructed to list the eligible household members in descending order
by age, then identified one or two household members to interview, based on
computer-generated sampling messages that were attached to each questionnaire
in advance.
The sample design for the prison component involved two stages of
selection. The first stage of sampling involved the selection of state or federal
correctional facilities with probability proportional to size, where the measure of
size for a given facility was equal to the inmate population. The second stage
involved the selection of inmates within each selected facility. Inmates were
selected with a probability inversely proportional to their facility’s inmate
population (up to a maximum of 22 interviews in a facility) so that the product of
the first and second stage probabilities would be constant.
Full sample and replicate weights were calculated for each record in order to
facilitate the calculation of unbiased estimates and their standard errors.
The full sample and replicate weights for the household components were
calculated as the product of the base weight for a record and a compositing and
raking factor. Demographic variables critical to the weighting were recoded and
imputed, if necessary, prior to the calculation of base weights.
The base weight was calculated as the reciprocal of the final probability of
selection for a respondent, which reflected all stages of sampling. The base
weight was then multiplied by a compositing factor which combined the national
and state component data in an optimal manner, considering the differences in
sample design, sample size, and sampling error between the two components.
Twelve different compositing factors were used, one for each of the 11
participating states, and a pseudo factor (equal to one) for all national component
records from outside the 11 participating states. The product of the base weight
and compositing factor for a given record was the composite weight.
The composite weights were raked so that several totals calculated with the
resulting full sample weights would agree with the 1990 census totals, adjusted
for undercount. The cells used for the raking were defined to the finest
combination of age, education level, race, and ethnicity that the data would allow.
Raking adjustment factors were calculated separately for each of the 11 states and
then for the remainder of the United States. The above procedures were repeated
Appendix A ......115