Between 2000 and 2004 (inclusive), I used cityd instead of city. I’m wondering how the data in the current city variable in the 1980, 90, and 2000 Censuses matches up to the data that would have been in cityd. Are the same people who would have been in a detailed city category how there under the label city or is it a wider group of people?
I’m not sure that I recall a detailed version of the CITY variable being available. When is your earlier extract with CITYD from? Do you have a command file with the CITYD labels in it that you’d be able to send to us?
This is a response to staff. Yes, I have just looked at the codes and they codes for the current city variable are the same as the ones previously identified as cityd (with some new city codes added now). The extract was done in April 2004. There used to be a less detailed city variable and I just want to make sure that there would have been no change to the people identified with the variable since there is no longer a city and a cityd. My concern is that there might be more people in the new “city” identified areas compared to when the original extract was done. If the variable has just been renamed and the original “city” removed, then I think all is well.
I believe that the apparent change from general to detailed CITY codes only affected the labels and did not affect which cases were identified. At the same time, it is difficult to be sure since we have no written documentation on this transition, unfortunately. The best option might be to try to get a count of persons with identified CITYD in your data and ensure it matches a similar count in the current data.