Thanks for satisfying my curiosity. I have never used Access but I am
very surprised to hear that it requires this format. Be that as it may,
my not so hidden point was that your new data structure is, for Stata
purposes, immensely inferior to the previous one.
Nick
[email protected]
K Jensen
I was using Stata to prepare data for a prewritten program--not
mine--in another package (MS Access) that expects the data in this
format. I suspected--correctly!--that it would be easier to do this in
Stata than in Access. Access would require either a silly number of
UNION queries or a VBA programming loop that would take many more
lines.
I am still lost in admiration for the neatness of Ulrich's solution.
2009/1/13 Nick Cox <[email protected]>:
> Ulrich gave a good answer to your question.
>
> Could you please explain why this data structure is any sense better
for
> analysis?
>
> K Jensen
>
> 2009/1/13 Ulrich Kohler <[email protected]>:
>> Am Dienstag, den 13.01.2009, 16:49 +0100 schrieb Ulrich Kohler:
>>> Am Dienstag, den 13.01.2009, 15:37 +0000 schrieb K Jensen:
>>> > Hi
>>> >
>>> > I would like to move from the following format
>>> > ID Age Weight Height
>>> > 1 23 140 62
>>> > 2 64 96 72
>>> > 3 49 123 67
>>> >
>>> > To this format:
>>> > ID Var_name Var_value
>>> > 1 Age 23
>>> > 1 Weight 140
>>> > 1 Height 62
>>> > 2 Age 64
>>> > 2 Weight 96
>>> > 2 Height 72
>>> > 3 Age 49
>>> > 3 Weight 123
>>> > 3 Height 67
>>> >
>>> > How can I do this in Stata? None of reshape, stack or xpose are
>>> > exactly what I need.
>>> >
>>> > In reality I have over 100 variables rather than three--so I would
>>> > like to avoid having to list the variables by name if possible.
>>>
>>>
>>> local i 1
>>> foreach var of varlist Age-Height {
>>> local lab`i' `var'
>>> ren `var' var`i++'
>>> }
>>> reshape long var, i(ID) j(Var_name)
>>> lab val Var_name names
>>> forv j = 1/`--i' {
>>> lab def names `j' "`lab`j''", modify
>>> }
>>
>>
>> Or even shorter by using a String-Variable for Var_name:
>>
>> foreach var of varlist Age-Height {
>> ren `var' var`var'
>> }
>> reshape long var, i(ID) j(Var_name) string
>
> That's _so_ neat--thankyou Ulrich! Exactly what I needed.
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