Create Private Weights

Universe Builder

Overview

In every database, each respondent in the sample represents a certain number of people in the population.  The number of people each respondent represents varies based on how many people like him or her were sampled, what they might represent besides people (MRI respondents can also be weighted to represent the household they live in), etc.  The Universe Builder utility lets you scale up or down different segments of the population, allowing you to:

• Scale a select group of respondents to the total population (i.e., BuyingStyles respondents).
• Change the split between mutually exclusive demographics in the population (i.e. Male/Female) based on some other source of data.
• Change the total population count based on some other estimate.
• Scale groups within the population for use in Reach & Frequency

These changes affect the entire population, modifying how many people each scaled respondent represents.  In your reports, the unweighted counts will not change, but the weighted counts (000) may change dramatically.

Using Universe Builder

To create a custom Universe:

• Run MEMRI 2, select a database with weight to population (000).
• Select [Create Private Weights] from main menu.
• In Universe Builder, select "Create" from the File menu.
• You will see this screen:
  
• Enter a name and code for your universe (the name will appear in the list of Private Weights in the lower right corner of the database selection screen).
• Enter a base set of respondents that you want to modify.   Typically, this will be "all", meaning all respondents in the database.

For each set of mutually exclusive factors that you want to scale on, do the following

• Press "Add" on the screen shown above.  This box will appear:
  
• Enter a group name ("Education", "Gender", "HHI", etc.) that will appear on the previous list.
• Press [Add] and enter the definition, label, and scale factor for each segment of the group.  The segments of the group should total 100% of the population, even if it means scaling one or more segments to 0%.
• Press [OK] when you have entered all of the group segments.
• Press [OK] on the first dialog box when you have entered all of the groups.

Example

In Fall 1998 MRI, there are 196,397,000 people made up of 94,258,000 men (47.99%)and 102,139,000 women (52.01%) according to the Census.  If the Census were to revise its estimate change the total population to 200,000,000 with 100,000,000 men and 100,000,000 women, we could create a new universe by doing the following:

1. Find the percent change in each demographic.  In this case, men went up 106.09%, and women went down 97.91%.
2. In Universe Builder, select File->Create.
3. Enter a name ("Revised Pop (000)") and code ("rpop", or think up your own unique code), and a base of "all" (since all respondents are affected).
4. Press [Add] to add a new group.
5. On the Group Definition box, press [Add]
6. Enter the first definition and label ("men" for both) and the scale factor 1.06
7. Enter the second definition and label ("women" for both) and the scale factor 0.98
8. Press [OK], since this is the last group segment.
9. Press [OK], since this is the last group.
10. In the toolbar, press [Save Specifications].  This will save a ".MRI" file so you will have a record of what went into your custom universe.
11. In the toolbar, press [Build New Weight File].  This will save a ".??W" file that contains the actual weights.  Make sure that this is file is saved in the start-up directory.
12. Exit from Universe Builder and press [Select Database/Study] from the main menu.
13. Select your the database and new universe.

In your Crosstab and Cost Ranking reports, the total population will now be 200,000,000.