Dear all,
I have a dataset of individuals each of whom approaches a number of others and after approaching each person is either accepted or rejected. I would like to do an event history analysis of how the duration of time it takes for an individual to secure an acceptance depends on his or hers individual characteristics.
The variables I am interested in have the following structure (missing dateacceppted means a rejection):
id dateapproached dateaccepted
1 20.04.2007 .
1 20.04.2007 .
1 18.05.2007 20.05.2007
1 18.05.2007 .
2 19.01.2006 .
2 20.03.2007 24.03.2007
2 20.03.2007 .
3 11.09.2007 18.09.2007
3 11.09.2007 15.09.2007
3 01.10.2007 .
3 07.11.2007 .
4 06.06.2007 .
4 08.07.2007 .
Out of this dataset I want to keep for each individual the date he or she made his first approach and the date he or she was first accepted.
To do so I tried to create a new variable date1accept which for each individual has the same value => the date he or she was first accepted. After that I dropped all the observations, but the 1st one for each individual.
To do so I used the following code:
sort id dateaccept
foreach X of new date1accept {
by id : gen `X' = dateaccept[1]
}
sort id
by id: gen y=_n
keep if y==1
I then ran two tests and Stata confirmed that thes assertions below were true:
/*To check that all the values of date1accept are the same*/
bysort id (date1accept) : assert date1accept[1] == date1accept[_N]
/*To check that dat1accept = the lowest value of dateaccept*/
bysort id (dateaccept) : assert dat1accept[1] == dateaccept[1]
yet something seems to be wrong with my commands, each time I re-run the code it comes up with slightly different set of date1accept values. I cannot understand where can my code be wrong so my tests do not pick it up.
Could anyone suggest what might be wrong or offer an alternative solution for my problem?
I will be most grateful for any advice,
Warm regards,
Ekaterina
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