st: Carry forward

[Tina Hernandez-Boussard <boussard@stanford.edu>]

Hi All,

I am having some problems with carryforward and I wanted to see if =
anyone else knows of any problems with this command.

I have a panel dataset that I have created and I want to use the =
carryforward command to fill in missing values. =20

. tsset id enroll

      panel variable:  id (unbalanced)

       time variable:  enroll, 1 to 3, but with gaps

               delta:  1 unit

. tsfill,full

. replace nvisits_year =3D 0 if nvisits_year =3D=3D .

(1517200 real changes made)

. **fill in missing data**

. bysort id: carryforward age, gen(age_1)

age_1:  (1517200 real changes made)


. bysort id: carryforward pay, gen (pay_cf)

pay_cf:  (1516900 real changes made)


. replace age_1 =3D age_1 + 1 if age=3D=3D.

(1517200 real changes made)



I have reloaded the raw data files and ran my exact same do file, =
however I get different results every time I run the code:


. tsset id enroll

      panel variable:  id (unbalanced)

       time variable:  enroll, 1 to 3, but with gaps

               delta:  1 unit

. tsfill,full

. replace nvisits_year =3D 0 if nvisits_year =3D=3D .

(1517200 real changes made)

. **fill in missing data**

. bysort id: carryforward age, gen(age_1)

age_1:  (1517200 real changes made)

. bysort id: carryforward pay, gen (pay_cf)

pay_cf:  (1516901 real changes made)

. replace age_1 =3D age_1 + 1 if age=3D=3D.

(1517200 real changes made)

=20
And the third time I run the code:

. bysort id: carryforward pay, gen (pay_cf)
pay_cf:  (1516894 real changes made)


Any help on what might be happening to the datafile and why the changes =
are not the same each time I run the code?

Thanks

Tina
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