The MEANS Procedure

WEIGHT Statement

Specifies weights for observations in the statistical calculations.

See also: For information on how to calculate weighted statistics and for an example that uses the WEIGHT statement, see WEIGHT

WEIGHT variable;

Required Arguments

variable

specifies a numeric variable whose values weight the values of the analysis variables. The values of the variable do not have to be integers. If the value of the weight variable is

Weight value... PROC MEANS...

0 counts the observation in the total number of observations

less than 0 converts the value to zero and counts the observation in the total number of observations

missing excludes the observation

To exclude observations that contain negative and zero weights from the analysis, use EXCLNPWGT. Note that most SAS/STAT procedures, such as PROC GLM, exclude negative and zero weights by default.

Restriction: To compute weighted quantiles, use QMETHOD=OS in the PROC statement.
Restriction: Skewness and kurtosis are not available with the WEIGHT statement.
Interaction: If you use the WEIGHT= option in a VAR statement to specify a weight variable, PROC MEANS uses this variable instead to weight those VAR statement variables.
Tip: When you use the WEIGHT statement, consider which value of the VARDEF= option is appropriate. See the discussion of VARDEF= and the calculation of weighted statistics in Keywords and Formulas for more information.

Note: Prior to Version 7 of the SAS System, the procedure did not exclude the observations with missing weights from the count of observations. [cautionend]

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Weight value...	PROC MEANS...
0	counts the observation in the total number of observations
less than 0	converts the value to zero and counts the observation in the total number of observations
missing	excludes the observation

Restriction:	To compute weighted quantiles, use QMETHOD=OS in the PROC statement.
Restriction:	Skewness and kurtosis are not available with the WEIGHT statement.
Interaction:	If you use the WEIGHT= option in a VAR statement to specify a weight variable, PROC MEANS uses this variable instead to weight those VAR statement variables.
Tip:	When you use the WEIGHT statement, consider which value of the VARDEF= option is appropriate. See the discussion of VARDEF= and the calculation of weighted statistics in Keywords and Formulas for more information.