I was using Stata to prepare data for a prewritten program--not
mine--in another package (MS Access) that expects the data in this
format. I suspected--correctly!--that it would be easier to do this in
Stata than in Access. Access would require either a silly number of
UNION queries or a VBA programming loop that would take many more
lines.
I am still lost in admiration for the neatness of Ulrich's solution.
Karin
2009/1/13 Nick Cox <[email protected]>:
> Ulrich gave a good answer to your question.
>
> Could you please explain why this data structure is any sense better for
> analysis?
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> K Jensen
>
> 2009/1/13 Ulrich Kohler <[email protected]>:
>> Am Dienstag, den 13.01.2009, 16:49 +0100 schrieb Ulrich Kohler:
>>> Am Dienstag, den 13.01.2009, 15:37 +0000 schrieb K Jensen:
>>> > Hi
>>> >
>>> > I would like to move from the following format
>>> > ID Age Weight Height
>>> > 1 23 140 62
>>> > 2 64 96 72
>>> > 3 49 123 67
>>> >
>>> > To this format:
>>> > ID Var_name Var_value
>>> > 1 Age 23
>>> > 1 Weight 140
>>> > 1 Height 62
>>> > 2 Age 64
>>> > 2 Weight 96
>>> > 2 Height 72
>>> > 3 Age 49
>>> > 3 Weight 123
>>> > 3 Height 67
>>> >
>>> > How can I do this in Stata? None of reshape, stack or xpose are
>>> > exactly what I need.
>>> >
>>> > In reality I have over 100 variables rather than three--so I would
>>> > like to avoid having to list the variables by name if possible.
>>>
>>>
>>> local i 1
>>> foreach var of varlist Age-Height {
>>> local lab`i' `var'
>>> ren `var' var`i++'
>>> }
>>> reshape long var, i(ID) j(Var_name)
>>> lab val Var_name names
>>> forv j = 1/`--i' {
>>> lab def names `j' "`lab`j''", modify
>>> }
>>
>>
>> Or even shorter by using a String-Variable for Var_name:
>>
>> foreach var of varlist Age-Height {
>> ren `var' var`var'
>> }
>> reshape long var, i(ID) j(Var_name) string
>
> That's _so_ neat--thankyou Ulrich! Exactly what I needed.
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