Weightings
SuperSERVER can be used to tabulate against sample surveys where each record in the sample survey has one or more associated weights. Population estimates are calculated by summing these weights, and estimates of means are also computed with these weights.
Survey design, planning, and implementation is outside the scope of SuperSTAR. The weightings must be calculated outside of the SuperSTAR system, and then included in the source unit records as measures when they are channelled into SXV4 format.
You are recommended not to change the weighting configuration for a database once it has gone live in your production deployment. Changes to the weighting configuration may invalidate saved tables and recodes that users have created for the database.
Configure SuperSERVER Weightings
This section only applies to weightings applied through SuperSERVER. The SuperSERVER weighting functionality allows you to configure consistent weighting across both SuperCROSS and SuperWEB2.
It is also possible to configure weighting locally in SuperCROSS. See Weightings for more details.
To configure weighting in SuperSERVER you must create two XML files that define the weight definitions and the available functions:
| <sxv4_filename>_sa_weightings.xml | This file defines the weights to be used by a given SXV4 database. There must be one weightings file for each SXV4 that you want to weight. The filename must include the filename of the SXV4 database it applies to and it must be located in the same directory as the SXV4 file. |
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| formulas.xml | The formulas file is optional. SuperSERVER only uses this to read the template string used to set the names for the weights displayed in the clients; the actual formulas for weighting are defined in SuperSERVER itself. A single formulas file can be shared between multiple databases.
When a database is configured to use SuperSERVER weighting, SuperCROSS uses an XML file called statistics.xml to control which summation options are available in SuperCROSS.
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Consistent Weightings in SuperCROSS and SuperSERVER
If you want to use weightings in both SuperCROSS and SuperWEB2, then you should change a configuration setting in SuperADMIN to ensure that the SuperSERVER weighting methodology is applied in both clients (it is not necessary to run this command if you are only using SuperWEB2 and not SuperCROSS).
In SuperADMIN, run the following command on every weighted database:
cat <database_id> weightings serverThis ensures that the database will use the SuperSERVER weighting methodology, rather than client-side SuperCROSS weightings. See Understanding SuperSERVER, SuperCROSS and SuperWEB2 Weighting Differences for more information about the different weighting methodologies and how to choose between them.