Colin M Fischbacher
>
> As I explained in my original posting, my problem is that
> the output of
> -dstdize- is less readable than it could be because it lacks value
> labels. The output I get (in Stata 7) looks like this (the column of
> figures down the left are unlabelled values):
>
> . dstdize diabz pop age_band sex, by(ethnic2 igt_stat) using
> ("D:\cmf\02 RESEARCH\misc\stats\ew1991.dta")
>
> . . . detailed output of tables omitted . . .
>
> Summary of Study Populations:
> ethnic2
> igt_stat N Crude Adj_Rate
> Confidence Interval
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
> --
> 0
> 1 48 0.041667 0.016955 [ 0.000000, 0.041110]
> 0
> 2 24 0.083333 0.059517 [ 0.000000, 0.129379]
> 0
> 3 22 0.227273 0.259115 [ 0.209528, 0.308701]
> 1
> 1 51 0.019608 0.012068 [ 0.000000, 0.034194]
> 1
> 2 11 0.181818 0.183187 [ 0.103009, 0.263364]
> 1
> 3 36 0.305556 0.440181 [ 0.352302, 0.528061]
>
> But a cross tab (for example) of the two grouping variables (IGT is
> impaired glucose tolerance) confirms that they do have value labels:
>
> . tab igt_stat ethnic2
>
> igt status |
> at | ethnic group
> baseline | European South Asi | Total
> -----------+----------------------+----------
> controls | 48 51 | 99
> IGT once | 24 11 | 35
> IGT twice | 23 36 | 59
> -----------+----------------------+----------
> Total | 95 98 | 193
>
> I tried shortening the value labels but this makes no difference. I
> misunderstood Nick's previous posting to be suggesting that
> obtaining
> value labels would require a modification to the source
> code - this is
> clearly not what he meant; the help files don't suggest
> that an option
> of any kind is missing.
We were talking at cross purposes.
I was looking at the code for the main
body of the output.
Colin's right: as this example makes clear,
for the "Summary of study populations"
at the end of its output -dstdize- does not respect
value labels of -by()- variables. You get a numeric value
shown or at most the first 9 characters of a string value.
My guess is that this design decision was driven by how much
space is available for what has to be printed.
Or, arguably, Colin has
found a small bug: within -dstdize- the command
works with -decode-d values of one group
of variables, but it doesn't do that for
its -by()- arguments.
For the moment, the upstream fix is to -decode-:
decode igt_stat, gen(sigt_stat)
decode ethnic2, gen(sethnic2)
or
foreach v of var igt_stat ethnic2 {
decode `v', gen(s`v')
}
Then
dstdize diabz pop age_band sex, by(sethnic2 sigt_stat) using
("D:\cmf\02 RESEARCH\misc\stats\ew1991.dta")
That will improve things. You will still get truncation
to (e.g) "South Asi".
Nick
[email protected]
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
