Tomasz wrote:
I have a beginner's problem. I am using Stata/IC 10.0 for Windows. In
my data set I have a string (str3) type variable COUNTRY (see below).
It does not have missing cases. In this variable I wanted to recode
numeric country codes (Country ID) into country names (e.g. '040' is
being replaced by 'Austria' etc.). I used two commands:
label define COUNTRY_label 040 "AUSTRIA" 056 "BELGIUM" 203 "CZECH
REPUBLIC" 208 "DENMARK" 246 "FINLAND" 250 "FRANCE" 276 "GERMANY" 300
"GREECE" 348 "HUNGARY" 352 "ICELAND" 372 "IRELAND" 380 "ITALY" 428
"LATVIA" 438 "LIECHTENSTEIN" 442 "LUXEMBOURG" 528 "NETHERLAND" 578
"NORWAY" 616 "POLAND" 620 "PORTUGAL" 703 "SLOVAKIA" 724 "SPAIN" 752
"SWEDEN" 756 "SWITZERLAND" 826 "UNITED KINGDOM"
label values COUNTRY COUNTRY_label
but STATa's response to the second command was:
may not label strings
r(181);
How can I recode labels in the string variable? Or where I can look
for information how to do that?
======================================================================
You must generate a numeric country code first, then attach labels:
clear
input str3 country
040
056
203
end
generate ncountry=real(country)
label define country_label 40 "AUSTRIA" 56 "BELGIUM" ///
203 "CZECH REPUBLIC"
label values ncountry country_label
list
+--------------------------+
| country ncountry |
|--------------------------|
1. | 040 AUSTRIA |
2. | 056 BELGIUM |
3. | 203 CZECH REPUBLIC |
+--------------------------+
list , nolabel
+--------------------+
| country ncountry |
|--------------------|
1. | 040 40 |
2. | 056 56 |
3. | 203 203 |
+--------------------+
You might want to display leading zeros in the numeric variable.
If you had no value labels attached, you could do it by:
format ncountry %03.0f
but the attachment of labels overrides that format.
Hope this helps
Svend
________________________________________________________
Svend Juul
Institut for Folkesundhed, Afdeling for Epidemiologi
(Institute of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology)
Vennelyst Boulevard 6
DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Phone, work: +45 8942 6090
Phone, home: +45 8693 7796
Fax: +45 8613 1580
E-mail: [email protected]
_________________________________________________________
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