I suspect you may be getting confused between what's being stored and
what's being displayed.
Try tabulating those encoded values using the -nol- option of the -tab-
command. I think you might find that they have actually been converted
to numeric codes but are just displaying as labels. Alternatively, used
the -desc- command to inspect the variable you now have and see if it is
string or numeric with value labels.
Richard Atkins
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
>>> "Donald Braman" <[email protected]> 18/04/2007 17:56 >>>
Thanks! I see that encode depends on labeling which seems to like
number -> string labeling, but not the reverse. So this works:
label define statefips 1 AL 2 AK 4 AZ 5 AR 6 CA 8 CO 9 CT 10 DE 11 DC
12 FL 13 GA 15 HI 16 ID 17 IL 18 IN 19 IA 20 KS 21 KY 22 LA 23 ME 24
MD 25 MA 26 MI 27 MN 28 MS 29 MO 30 MT 31 NE 32 NV 33 NH 34 NJ 35 NM
36 NY 37 NC 38 ND 39 OH 40 OK 41 OR 42 PA 44 RI 45 SC 46 SD 47 TN 48
TX 49 UT 50 VT 51 VA 53 WA 54 WV 55 WI 56 WY 60 AS 66 GU 72 PR 78 VI
but this doesn't:
label define statefips AK 2 AL 1 AR 5 AS 60 AZ 4 CA 6 CO 8 CT 9 DC 11
DE 10 FL 12 GA 13 GU 66 HI 15 IA 19 ID 16 IL 17 IN 18 KS 20 KY 21 LA
22 MA 25 MD 24 ME 23 MI 26 MN 27 MO 29 MS 28 MT 30 NC 37 ND 38 NE 31
NH 33 NJ 34 NM 35 NV 32 NY 36 OH 39 OK 40 OR 41 PA 42 PR 72 RI 44 SC
45 SD 46 TN 47 TX 48 UT 49 VA 51 VI 78 VT 50 WA 53 WI 55 WV 54 WY 56
Using encode with the first version just gives me my string values
again.
Don
--
Donald Braman
email: [email protected]
On 4/18/07, Richard Goldstein <[email protected]> wrote:
> try the -encode- command
>
> Rich
>
> Donald Braman wrote:
>
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I have a variable that happens to be a string FIPS abbreviation
and
> > would like to convert it into a numerical FIPS code (e.g., "AL"
into
> > 1).
> >
> > I'm new to STATA, and all my attempts using recode, egen,
destring,
> > etc. have failed. I'm sure it's easy, just can't seem to figure it
> > out.
> >
> > Help?
> >
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
