Re: st: ordering of categories when cross-tabulating

[Maarten buis <maartenbuis@yahoo.co.uk>]

--- On Tue, 19/10/10, Phil Clayton  wrote:
> I would suggest encoding the string variable as a numeric
> variable with value labels. That way you can order them
> however you like, and it's more compatible with various
> commands. See -help encode- and also [U] 23.2 Categorical
> string variables.

Using -encode- is a good suggestion. Here is an example:

*--------------------- begin example --------------------
// create example data
clear
set obs 100
gen u = runiform()
gen str20 x = cond(u<.25, "Very important", ///
              cond(u<.6, "Somewhat important", "Not Important"))

// create label
label define x2 1 "Very important" ///
                2 "Somewhat important" ///
                3 "Not important"
// use encode to transform x to numeric variable x2
encode x, label(x2) gen(x2)

// tabulate
tab x2
tab x
*----------------------- end example -------------------------
(For more on examples I sent to the Statalist see: 
http://www.maartenbuis.nl/example_faq )

Hope this helps,
Maarten

--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany

http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------


      

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