st: Arrow diagram connecting before and after categories

[Mollie Hogan <hogan@post.harvard.edu>]

Greetings,

I am hoping to get some help with a graphing issue. I'm trying to
create what I can best describe as a before/after arrow diagram
showing reclassification of categorical variables.

I have a dataset where each observation is one death. Each death goes
through a review process, and I have one variable showing the cause of
death before the review process, and another variable showing the
cause of death after the review process. I want a diagram that has, on
the left side, the list of causes BEFORE the review and then on the
right side, the list of causes AFTER the review. I want each case
represented by a line connecting the appropriate before and after
causes. Pretty straightforward, right? The hitch is that the "before"
categories are in broad groupings and the "after" causes are more
specific than that. So the list of causes before and after is not the
same.

I have tried several things: linkplot got me the closest, but I cannot
label the "before" and "after" categories with different labels (since
it's just the one yvar). I have started trying to overlay many line
graphs, and then add text manually, but I have quite a lot of
categories and thought I would ask and see if anyone has any other
thoughts about a good approach or user-written command that might do
the trick.

I am running Stata 11.2 on a Mac, but can access 12.1 on Windows if
the solution lies there!

Many thanks for any advice or suggestions you can offer.

Yours,
Mollie Hogan
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