st: Re: tabulating and summarising

[baum <baum@bc.edu>]

--On Friday, January 10, 2003 2:33 -0500 Kim wrote:

> I have 5 variables that list chronic conditions and I need to tally the
> conditions across the variables.  First I tried generating a dummy
> variable and replacing it with each subset of chronic categories across
> the five variables and then by creating each separately and recoding
> them, however these approaches did not yield accurate results.  After
> looking in the reference manuals and on-line I tried both the sum and
> count commands, however they are also not presenting accurate totals
> either.  I've enclosed excerpts from my Do-files using both the dummy
> variables and "count" command.
>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Kim
>
> Using a dummy variable:
>
> # delimit ;
> gen cc=.;
>
> replace cc=1 if chron1cat==1;
> replace cc=1 if chron2cat==1;
> replace cc=1 if chron3cat==1;
> replace cc=1 if chron4cat==1;
> replace cc=1 if chron5cat==1;
>
> replace cc=2 if chron1cat==2;
> replace cc=2 if chron2cat==2;
> replace cc=2 if chron3cat==2;
> replace cc=2 if chron4cat==2;
> replace cc=2 if chron5cat==2;
>
> replace cc=3 if chron1cat==3;
> replace cc=3 if chron2cat==3;
> replace cc=3 if chron3cat==3;
> replace cc=3 if chron4cat==3;
> replace cc=3 if chron5cat==3;
>
> and so forth....
>
> Using a dummy variable and recoding:
>
> # delimit ;
> gen cc=.;
>
> replace cc=1 if chron1cat==1;
> replace cc=2 if chron2cat==1;
> replace cc=3 if chron3cat==1;
> replace cc=4 if chron4cat==1;
> replace cc=5 if chron5cat==1;
>
> replace cc=6 if chron1cat==2;
> replace cc=7 if chron2cat==2;
> replace cc=8 if chron3cat==2;
> replace cc=9 if chron4cat==2;
> replace cc=10 if chron5cat==2;
>
> and so forth...
>
> recode cc
> 1/5=1
> 6/10=2
>
> and so forth...
>
> Using count (I followed a similar format using sum):
>
> count if chron1cat==1 | chron2cat==1 | chron3cat==1 | chron4cat==1 |
> chron5cat==1;
> /*1 "Nervous system" */
> count if chron1cat==2 | chron2cat==2 | chron3cat==2 | chron4cat==2 |
> chron5cat==2;
> /* 2 "Headache/migraine" */
> count if chron1cat==3 | chron2cat==3 | chron3cat==3 | chron4cat==3 |
> chron5cat==3;
> /* 3 "Problems with vision" */

Not sure just what you want the end result to be, but all these repetitive 
statements are surely not necessary...

local nchron 3
gen cc=.
forval i=1/5 {
	forval j=1/`nchron' {
		replace cc=`j' if chron`i'cat == `j'
		}
	}

but that will give you one outcome variable which will merely have the 
highest value of chron?cat for that observation. To answer the question, 
please make clear
(1) how many possible values there are (nchron above)
(2) what the outcome should be -- one variable, several variables (e.g. can 
the patient be suffering from more than one chronic condition?)

Thx
Kit
________________________________________________________________________
Christopher F Baum, Boston College Economics, Chestnut Hill MA 02467 USA
baum@bc.edu                              http://fmwww.bc.edu/ec/baum.php


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