--- Peter Odigie <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am working with the multinomial logit command,
> mlogit and I have these questions:
>
> 1. How do I save the results (coefficients, predicted
> probabilities, marginal effects,...) from the command
> to an excel file. I tried using "matcell" , that is
> converting the results to a matrix, so that I could
> export it to excel. But this does not work.
Each discipline, journal, and individual has his own
prefered way of looking at the results from -mlogit-.
So Stata can't just dump everything in excel. The
general strategy is to create the table in Stata and
export that table using the appropriate commands
which differ depending how you made the table. I can
not be more specific than this because you have not
told us what you want to export and how you created
that table (or if you made that table at all)
> 2. I discretized the continuous dependent variables in
> order to have a categorical dependent variable. Is
> this acceptable?
Again you need to give is more information: why do you
do this? Generally, I would say that this is a major
waste of information, you not only loose information
about the distances between the values but also about
the ordering. So generally I would so that it is not
acceptable.
However, there are specific cases where this could
make sense, e.g. some think that occupations can be
ordered along a single occupational status scale,
while others think there just are a few distinct
classes. If you think that you want to have classes
but only have status, and you know how to derive
classes from status (which is definately not trivial
or even possible) than it might make sense to turn
the continuous variable into a categorical variable.
However, often this strategy is an imperfect fix. To
continue this example: Both status and class are
derived from answers to the question: what is your
job? Such question results in a job title, which is
than recoded into either class or status (or both).
If you want class than it is much better to go back
to the original job titles and create classes from
those. Discretizing status into classes is something
you would only do if the original data where lost.
Hope this helps,
Maarten
-----------------------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Department of Social Research Methodology
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Boelelaan 1081
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
visiting address:
Buitenveldertselaan 3 (Metropolitan), room Z434
+31 20 5986715
http://home.fsw.vu.nl/m.buis/
-----------------------------------------
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