I am not clear on your data structure.
One natural data structure would be seem to be to hold
information on A through F as indicator variables, 1 for has and
0 for has not condition.
gen ndiseases = A + B + C + D + E + F
counts diseases. Then
gen status = 0 if ndiseases = 0
tokenize "A B C D E F"
forval i = 1/6 {
replace status = `i' if ``i'' == 1 & ndiseases == 1
}
replace status = 7 if ndiseases > 2 & ndiseases < .
assert status < 8
Nick
[email protected]
Leonard E. Egede MD, MS
> I am trying to create a categorical variable with 8 levels
> each representing the presence of one of six discrete disease
> conditions. However, it is possible for subjects to have more
> than 1 disease condition. How do I create such a multi-level
> variable so that each level contains only subjects with 1 of
> the disease conditions and those with multiple disease
> conditions fall into a level and those with none of the
> diseases of interest fall into another level?
>
> I tried the generate and replace commands as shown below but
> i am uncertain of how stata handles arguments in the replace command
>
> ***What i have done so far***
> I created a multi-level variable using generate and replace
> capture discrete medical conditions with 7 categories as follows
> generate disease
> replace disease=2 if medical condition ==A
> replace disease=3 if medical condition ==B
> replace disease=4 if medical condition ==C
> replace disease=5 if medical condition ==D
> replace disease=6 if medical condition ==E
> replace disease=7 if medical condition ==F
>
> The questions are - is this the right method? if so how do i
> code subjects with more than 1 of the conditions above i.e
> any combinations of A thru F. Also, how does this approach handle
> people with 2 or more of the specified conditions.
>
> I intend to use the 8 level variable in a logistic model with
> level 1 (those without diseases of interest) as the reference.
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