The records are comma-delimited with fixed column positions. The 21 data files are organized by subject matter. The first 15 files contain only building characteristics data, while files 16 through 21 contain consumption and expenditure information. The 21 files are grouped into 4 self-extracting files, each containing 5 or 6 files. In those cases, the files have to be linked to one another.
Imputation is a statistical procedure used to fill in values for missing items.
Many, but not all, of the variables were imputed in 1995. The imputation flag indicates whether the corresponding non-Z variable was reported, imputed, missing, or inapplicable. Therefore, a building with a base weight of 1,000 represents itself and 999 similar, but unsampled buildings in the total building stock. The base weight is further adjusted to account for nonresponse bias. In order to obtain a weighted estimate, each sample building's value must be multiplied by the building's weight.