Hi all,
It may be obvious, but I can't find a way to merge observations. I
don't mean merging data-files but just individual observations.
In my data set individuals can be identified by a variable called rin.
However, since there are multiple occurrences of almost all
individuals, I want to merge these observations. Every occurrence of
an individual means that there has been a change in the person's
situation. Every observation has it's own startdate and enddate, which
mark the period for which this observation is valid. There is also a
variable called mutcode, which tells me what kind of change happened.
Now there are three different scenarios that can take place:
1) The change was not interesting for my research and I just want to
replace the enddate of the first observation with the enddate of the
observation after the change has taken place. Let's say that this has
mutcode==1.
2) The change was interesting for my research. Let's say that the
marital status of a person has changed to married==1. What I'd like
now, is to create a new variable in the first occurrence, that shows
the startdate of the second occurrence and a second new variable that
shows married2==1. Let's say that the mutcode==2.
3) When a person moves within a municipality, this is not very
interesting for me. However, when a person moves to another
municipality, this change is interesting. Both have mutcode==3. Is it
possible to do something similar to (2) here for the persons that
moved to another municipality and something similar to (1) when they
move within a municipality.
I hope someone can help me out with this, or point me to the right command.
Thanks a lot,
Sander
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