Re: st: program to measure missing values of one variable againstothers

[Gary Longton <glongton@fhcrc.org>]

David Kantor wrote:

> I will need a program to take a varlist, and for each variable, see how 
> badly it is populated with missing values with respect to all the others.
>
> The purpose is to see which variables are the spoilers -- the ones that 
> cause the most damage in terms of limiting the usable set of 
> observations in an analysis.  Thus, it is not enough to say that x has 
> 98 missing values. If they are mostly the same cases as have missing 
> values in other variables, then it's not a problem. If they are largely 
> in cases different from those with missing values in other variables, 
> then it is a problem.
>
> I can do this with not too much effort, but I ask in case someone knows 
> of an existing program for this purpose. (Or is there something in 
> standard Stata?)
Jeroen Weesie's -mvpatterns- (STB 61, 2001) should do what you want - it takes a 
varlist and provides the frequencies of all missing value patterns for variables 
in the list.  "findit mvpatterns" will point you to it.

- Gary




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