Re: st: Reshape with prefix using a varlist

[Rebecca Pope <rebecca.a.pope@gmail.com>]

Richard,
I know you've gotten what you need to accomplish the task at hand, but
I'd like to address your original question, in case you may find this
trick useful at a later date...

If you want a series of the form @var1 @var2 etc, you can always make
Stata write the bulk of the command for you. I've used variants of
this for all sorts of purposes (e.g. sticking "i." or "c." in front of
a list of variables).

/*use this if all countries are countryi*/
local vars ""
forvalues i=1/244 {
local vars "`vars' @country`i'"
}

/*use this if you have names that vary from the countryi naming convention*/
unab varlist: country1 - country244
local vars ""
foreach var of local varlist {
local vars "`vars' @`var' "
}

Then you could submit, using your example, -reshape wide `vars',
i(inst year) j(LEVEL) string-.
Hope this helps,
Rebecca

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:51 PM, Richard Murphy
<r1ch4rd.murphy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That's a very good point, I hadn't considered going in the other
> direction (even longer) and then collapsing when need be.
> Thanks for this, I think i will give this a try.
>
> Best
> Richard
>
>
> On 14 March 2011 18:35, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think I would make this even -long-er if it were mine.
> >
> > reshape long country , i(year inst LEVEL)
> >
> > Then whatever reductions you want would be -egen- or -collapse- or -contract-.
> >
> > Why do I suggest this? You are already imagining that you need to
> > combine a loop over variables with totals over observations. Think how
> > much more of that you would need with yet more variables.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 1:21 AM, Richard Murphy
> > <r1ch4rd.murphy@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> The label "country1-country244" represents the remaining 244
> >> variables, containing the total amount of students from that country
> >> at that level in a uni-year.
> >> Are you suggesting something along the lines of
> >> foreach x in varlist eu uk {
> >>
> >>
> >> On 14 March 2011 18:02, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Thanks. That clarifies some things but not others. In your example,
> >>> you have 7 headings but 6 columns of data. What is
> >>> "country1-country244"? A variable label?
> >>>
> >>> The totals for groups are easily computable using -egen, total()- with
> >>> your present structure.
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:45 AM, Richard Murphy
> >>> <r1ch4rd.murphy@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Hi Nick ,
> >>>> I appreciate that it looks foolish making a wide dataset even wider,
> >>>> but I don't think its that bad in this case.
> >>>> I have university by degree level by year data. For each of these i
> >>>> have the number of students coming from 244 different countries, along
> >>>> with total EU and total OS.
> >>>>
> >>>> year    instit  LEVEL   os      uk      eu country1-country244
> >>>> 1994    1       ug              12      146     0
> >>>> 1994    1       pgr             3       335     3
> >>>> 1994    1       pgt     1       101     0
> >>>> 1995    1       ug              7       119     0
> >>>> 1995    1       pgr             4       300     9
> >>>> 1995    1       pgt             6       59      17
> >>>>
> >>>> There are 3 levels of degree, which i would like to make wide. So that
> >>>> I would have a panel dataset for universities over time. The reason
> >>>> why i want to do this is that I want to calculate the cross
> >>>> subsidisation that occurs between the degree levels, and for this I
> >>>> need the totals for each within an observation.
> >>>>
> >>>> I need to do this for all the countries as i'm using a Card
> >>>> Shift-Share approach as an instrument for changes in overseas numbers,
> >>>> which i would like to define in various different ways throughout the
> >>>> analysis (EU, NonEU, Asia, ect).
> >>>>
> >>>> And i would like the prefix, so that the variable names fit into my
> >>>> pre existing do files for the analysis.
> >>>>
> >>>> Best regards
> >>>> Richard
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 14 March 2011 17:24, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>> Please tell us directly more about your dataset and why you think
> >>>>> -reshape wide- is a good idea. From what you say it just make most
> >>>>> analyses more difficult. Also, how many variables will you end up
> >>>>> with?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Nick
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:13 AM, Richard Murphy
> >>>>> <r1ch4rd.murphy@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> Hi all,
> >>>>>> I want to reshape long data to wide, putting the 'j' string variable
> >>>>>> at the begging of the stub.
> >>>>>> This would be fine if I have a limited number of variables as i can
> >>>>>> just use the @ function.
> >>>>>> reshape wide @var1 @var2 @var3 @var4, i(instit year) j(LEVEL) string
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> But this does not work if i use the variable list functionality of
> >>>>>> reshape. I would like to know if their is an easier way of doing this,
> >>>>>> rather than typing in all 244 variables preceded by @.
> >>>>>> reshape wide @var1-@var244, i(instit year) j(LEVEL) string
> >>>>>>
> >
> > *
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> >
>
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