Re: st: Generating dummy variable with information of household survey from different observations

[Eric Booth <eric.a.booth@gmail.com>]

On May 7, 2012, at 1:13 AM, Sumiko Hayasaka wrote:

> Everything works out until I get to the "foreach" command. It says the
> expression is too long [r(130)]. What should I do?
> Thank you again!

The r(130) error comes from the -inlist()- part of the -generate- command I showed because, at some point, it has too many elements.  

This means you have a lot of father_row* variables after the initial -reshape-, probably because you don't have individual_id's like {1,2,3…} like you show, but individual id's like {99998,99917,…} that are unique to all (or most) individual_id's.  One way to get around this would be to generate individual_id's within the household using the -egen- function 'group()' or :

	bys household_id (individual_id): g i = _n

and then using "i" in place of individual_id in my example (but, you'd need to remember to carry 'individual_id' through the -reshape-).

That will get around the too many values issue assuming you don't have many hundreds of people in a household (inlist()'s limit appears to be 250 - though its not in -help limits- so I don't know if that limit is the same across all versions/flavors of Stata --I've got MP, and 250 is the limit I've encountered).

Of course, NJC's examples with looping over individuals is resilient against this type of issue with my code, but I wanted to follow up to explain where/why my example failed.

- Eric

__
Eric A. Booth
Public Policy Research Institute
Texas A&M University
ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
Office: +979.845.6754


On May 7, 2012, at 1:13 AM, Sumiko Hayasaka wrote:

> Thanks Eric!
> 
> Everything works out until I get to the "foreach" command. It says the
> expression is too long [r(130)]. What should I do?
> 
> Thank you again!
> 
> 
> On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 11:44 PM, Eric Booth <eric.a.booth@gmail.com> wrote:
>> <>
>> 
>> ***************!
>> clear
>> inp household_id   individual_id   father_row
>>  1011     1    .
>>  1011     2    .
>>  1011     3    1
>>  1011     4    1
>> 
>>  1012     1     2
>>  1012     2     .
>> 
>>  1013      1    .
>>  1013      2    .
>>  1013      3    2
>>  1013      4    1
>>  1013      5    1
>>  end
>> 
>> 
>> levelsof individual_id, loc(a)
>> reshape wide father_row, i(household_id) j(individual_id)
>> ds father_row*
>> loc checklist `r(varlist)'
>> loc checklist:subinstr loc checklist " " ", " , all
>> foreach n in `a' {
>>         g father`n' = cond(inlist(`n', `checklist'), 1, 0, .)
>>        }
>> reshape long father_row father, i(household_id) j(individual_id)
>> 
>> 
>> ***************!
>> - Eric
>> 
>> __
>> Eric A. Booth
>> Public Policy Research Institute
>> Texas A&M University
>> ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
>> +979.845.6754
>> 
>> On May 6, 2012, at 10:34 PM, Sumiko Hayasaka wrote:
>> 
>>> I am trying to generate a dummy variable, with information from a
>>> household survey, which can tell if a member of the household is a
>>> father or not. I have a household id, an individual id (per
>>> household), and a variable that tells me which individual id is marked
>>> as being a father (members of the family are asked if their father
>>> lives in the household and to give their father's individual id).
>>> Therefore, I need to assign a 1 at the row in which someone at the
>>> household said that was a father. To illustrate this, the data is
>>> something like this (I am trying to get the "father" variable):
>>> 
>>> household_id   individual_id   father_row   father
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  1011                 1                      .                1
>>>  1011                 2                      .                0
>>>  1011                 3                      1               0
>>>  1011                 4                      1               0
>>> 
>>>  1012                 1                       2               0
>>>  1012                 2                       .                1
>>> 
>>>  1013                  1                      .                1
>>>  1013                  2                      .                1
>>>  1013                  3                      2               0
>>>  1013                  4                      1               0
>>>  1013                  5                      1               0
>>> 
>>> 
>>> So, for example, members number 3 and 4 of household number 1011
>>> stated that their father is individual number 1 in that household.
>>> This means that I have to put the 1 of "father" (meaning the household
>>> member is a father) at the row where father_row indicates (no matter
>>> how many times this is done).
>>> 
>>> Is there any way in which I can do this? I really appreciate your
>>> help! Thank you!
>>> *
>>> *   For searches and help try:
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>>> *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
>>> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>> 
>> *
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> 
> *
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*
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