st: Week data, daily data, and end-of-year

["Sauermann J (ROA)" <j.sauermann@maastrichtuniversity.nl>]

Dear Statalist, 

I have a dataset containing week information. The variable --week-- is generated from a year variable (2008, 2009) and a week variable (1,...,52). Weeks are defined as calendar weeks, i.e. always ranging from Monday until Sunday. The week "1" of a year are thus a whole week (Mon-Sun) where at least 4 days are in the new year (i.e. for the past two years, week "1" overlaps new year's eve).

Stata defines week "1" as the first 7 days in the new year, i.e. January 1-January 7, irrespective of the weekdays. December 31, 2008 (Wednesday) was for instance week "2547" while January 1, 2009 (Thursday) was week "2548". 

Next to the weekly data, I have an additional dataset which is based on daily data. To use it properly, I transformed it using Stata to weekly data. This obviously gives wrong results since the week break in Stata may be in the middle of the week, while the week break in my weekly data is Sunday/Monday. 

Is there any way to tell Stata to use a date format where week "1" of a year is the first week with at least 4 days in the new year?

[I guess one solution would be to manually generate own week counters which can be matched properly]


Many thanks in advance,

Jan



Jan Sauermann
Researcher

Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market
Maastricht University | ROA
P.O. Box 616, NL-6200 MD Maastricht
T +31 43 3883801 F +31 43 3884914


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