st: RE: RE: Difficult wide file

["Lachenbruch, Peter" <Peter.Lachenbruch@oregonstate.edu>]

If you plan to ignore variables that are coded differently, why not drop them? Or else, you should invest some time to code them in the same way.

Tony

Peter A. Lachenbruch
Department of Public Health
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97330
Phone: 541-737-3832
FAX: 541-737-4001


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 7:03 AM
To: 'statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu'
Subject: st: RE: Difficult wide file

This is rather too general to evoke a specific answer (from me at any rate). But more positively, I'd assert that long rather than wide is the better way to analyse data of this kind in Stata [sic] in the great majority of problems, so you are better off where you are. So, why not spell out what different types, different coding and "doesn't appear to like" mean? (There is no homunculus inside; it's just zeros and ones.) 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Guy Mole

I am trying to create a wide file from long data. Each patient in the data has had several angiograms which I would like put on the same line. The angiograms are however sometimes coded differently (as they are different types) and some other variables are coded differently for the same patient (which is what STATA doesn't appear to like). Is there a way to get STATA to ignore the differently coded variables, and so just put one full line for each patient ID? Many thanks in advance for your help.


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