Re: st: Q re Quarterly Labour Force Survey

["Ada Ma" <heu034@googlemail.com>]

Thanks nick for the suggestion.  I have now have two list - one list
of variables which are in the dataset throughout the entire period,
and another list of variables which are not in every single quarter.
I am also using -summarize- instead of -ds- as I have read it
somewhere that it is somewhat slower to use ado files than native
commands.

A few years ago I did a analysis using all the quarters of the QLFS
from 1996 to 2002 and I had to have a different varlist for almost
every single quarter.  The current method is perhaps the solution
which gives me least pain, but unfortunately not the computer.

Warm regards,
Ada

On 11/4/06, Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> If the issue is which of a set of names is in another list,
> then this is very inefficient, although you might be hard put
> to notice that.
>
> -ds- is an undocumented command written in Stata,
> but as such implies an interpretative overhead which
> is not needed here.
>
> The -help- for -macrolists- gives details of various
> list operators that should offer more direct solutions,
> including intersection, union and difference.
>
> Nick
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
>
> Ada Ma
>
> > Oooops - don't mind me, I think I have just figured out a solution
> > after reading
> > David Elliott's email.  I can put all the variables' names in a
> > global, loop through the global list and -ds- each variable on the
> > list, and if the return code is 0 then I add it to a final list, where
> > I'll then use it to draw varibles out from the datasets.
> >
> > However if you have some good suggestions please fireaway
> > anyway!  Cheers!!
>
> On 11/4/06, Ada Ma <heu034@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I want to draw out a set of variables from the QLFS from all 1992 to
> > > 2005.  I can do a loop to loop through all the years and quarters,
> > > however, getting the variables out is a bit tricky.
> > >
> > > Most of the variables keep the same name throughout the 14
> > years, but
> > > there are a good number where they had changed names, only appear in
> > > Spring and Autumn and not others, only introduced some
> > years after the
> > > series started, etc.  For example gross pay is called GROSS99 from
> > > 1999, but EMPGRO in years prior to that.  A Cohabitating dummy was
> > > introduced in 2000.  Then new Standardised Occupational
> > Classification
> > > code was introduced in 2001.  These are just three out of
> > many changes
> > > that had been introduced to the data set through years.
> > >
> > > Is there anyway to get around this so that I may pull out all the
> > > variables I would like to get, if they're available, without having
> > > set up an unique varlist for each and every one of the datasets?
> > > There are 57 quarters and quite a good number of variables
> > I'd like to
> > > pull out.  The alternative would be to append all 57
> > quarters and then
> > > pull out the vars, but the datasets are rather big so it's not an
> > > option that is open to me given the computers I have access to.
>
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--
Ada Ma
Research Fellow
Health Economics Research Unit
University of Aberdeen, UK.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/heru/
Tel: +44 (0) 1224 553863
Fax: +44 (0) 1224 550926
*
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