How do I use the Health Survey for England individual weights if I’m pooling the data from the 1999 and 2004 datasets (ethnic boost years)?
The 1999 and 2004 Health Surveys for England (HSE) both contained ethnic boost samples in order to increase the number of ethnic minority respondents in the survey. It is possible to pool the 1999 and 2004 datasets to further increase the number of ethnic minority respondents for your analyses. When pooling the 2 datasets you need to ensure that you use the weights from 1999 and 2004 in the correct way. First you need to prepare the 2004 weights, see the detailed briefing note on how to use the 2004 Health Survey for England (HSE) weights. Next, you need to prepare the 1999 weights which are less complex than the 2004 weights. For the 1999 dataset you need to follow the same procedure as 2004 in terms of dropping the ethnic minority cases from the general population dataset, merging the 2 files together and adjusting the weight so that the weighted total equals the actual total. All of this is illustrated in the detailed briefing note on how to use the 2004 Health Survey for England (H
