I have two different data sources:
- a US survey at general geographic level (i.e. north, south, etc.)
- a dataset on a specific disease at the individual level I know that I cannot merge two datasets that are not at the same level (zone vs individual), but the question is: can I aggregate the second dataset into zones just like the first one and then merge the two? Also, if yes, how can I perform the aggregation?
The first dataset has in it general information about surveyed individuals and contains also their residence (which is precisely at the zone-level I was discussing above), whereas the second one is a cancer database which should contain cancer cases in the US and their residence at the state-level. Also, the first one contains weights and the survey has been conducted every year since 1970, however my period of interest is like from 2018 onwards more or less (still not sure, but I need recent data).