Re: st: coding a categorical variable to a % continuous variable

[Roger Newson <roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk>]

At 01:56 12/06/2004, Suzy wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a dichotomous variable (0=no ; 1=yes) that I would like to use in a 
> scatter plot on the y axis as a continuous variable  as a  % variable.
>
> For example:  the x axis could be age and the y axis could be % smokers.
>
> Can anyone help with this ?
You don't say what version of Stata you are using. However, if it is Stata 
8, then you can use either -xcollapse- or -xcontract- (downloadable from SSC).

With -xcontract-, you can create a dataset with 1 observation per age group 
and smoking category and data on percent of smoking category within age 
group, and plot bthe percentages smoking, something like this:

xcontract smoker, by(agegp) norestore
scatter _percent agegp if smoker==1

With -xcollapse-, the program would be more like:

xcollapse (mean) smoker, by(agegp) norestore
replace smoker=smoker*100
lab var smoker "Percent smokers"
scatter smoker agegp

To find more about -xcollapse- and -xcontract-, type

ssc desc xcollapse
ssc desc xcontract

and to i8nstall them ,type

ssc inst xcontract
ssc inst xcollapse

If you want your percentages to have confidence limits, then you might like 
to use the -parmest- package, also downloadable from SSC, together with the 
official Stata -binreg- command.

I hope this helps.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
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Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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