Definition
PERWEIGHT (V005) is an 8-digit variable with 6 implied decimal places, which should be used as a weighting factor to produce representative numbers accurately describing the surveyed population.
While the DHS Recode Manuals direct the researcher to divide the original weight variable by 1,000,000 before applying the weighting factor to the original DHS data files, it is not necessary to modify the value of PERWEIGHT before applying this weight to cases in IPUMS-DHS.
PERWEIGHT should be used to weight nearly all tabulations made using IPUMS-DHS data. Occasionally, as with the domestic violence variables, a subset of respondents are randomly selected to answer questions from a survey module, and a specialized weight such as DVWEIGHT should be used instead.
Note: The 6 implied decimal places in PERWEIGHT mean that the last six digits of the eight-digit variable are decimal digits, but there is no actual decimal in the data.