st: details of how the impute command work

[Tim Hale <timhale@mindspring.com>]

Hi all,

I have a rather simple question. I am trying to figure out exactly  
what the -impute- command in Stata does to estimate missing values.  
The help files in Stata are not very helpful. From what I have found  
on the internet, it appears -impute- is a regression-based method to  
estimate missing values based on other variables in the data set.  
However, the help files also say that -impute- "organizes the cases by  
patterns of missing data so that the missing-value regressions can be  
conducted efficiently." Does anyone know what this entails? I need to  
include some mention of this in my methods section.

Thanks for your help,
Tim Hale

-----------------------------------------------------
Tim Hale
Graduate Assistant
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Department of Sociology



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