It appears unclear why you want to -destring-
in this circumstance, as your variables are not
really numeric in content and you just run the
risk of losing information.
If, however, you need a numeric categorical variable
for some purpose, e.g. -anova-, then -encode-
not -destring- is the appropriate way to do it.
Nick
[email protected]
Suzy
> I have a number of string variables in my dataset. Within
> these string
> variables are observations that are coded with either numeric
> categorical values coded like this: (4010, 40120) or with
> dashes (4010-,
> 4012-) meaning that these four codes represent four different things.
> Each string variable has hundreds of different categories
> that are coded
> in this manner. I'm trying to convert the string variables
> to numeric
> and also be able to retain analysing the observations that
> the contain
> dashes.
>
> I've tried various destringing options such as these listed
> below with
> the following STATA response.:
>
> .destring dxcode1, generate(dxcode1num)
> dxcode1 contains non-numeric characters; no generate
>
> .destring dxcode1, replace
> dxcode1 contains non-numeric characters; no replace
>
> I've e-mailed once before on this topic, so I apologize in
> advance for
> the redundant question, but I'm still having trouble and I'm not
> computer/STATA savvy. If anyone has some beginner
> user-friendly advice with explicit coding, it would be much appreciated.
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