Re: st: RE: Graphing the median of a list of variables

[Jeremy Voros <jeremyvoros@gmail.com>]

With some data clean up and using -collapse - (thank you Nick!) I have a table containing the data I'd like to graph, though I had each year on it's own row and each question as a column.

-xpose- let me transpose the data to make generating the line graph I wanted easy enough. Didn't need -reshape- after all.

Thanks for the help.

-- Jeremy


On Apr 28, 2010, at 6:30 AM, Nick Cox wrote:

> It now does sound like a -reshape- before you draw a graph. 
> 
> Nick 
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 
> 
> Jeremy Voros
> 
> -collapse- looks like it might be the tool I'm looking for. But, the
> data I have are self-assessments of competency in a variety of areas.
> The mean increases as the year increases. I'm trying to devise a method
> of visualizing the responses to all the questions improving over time.
> Putting the year along the x-axis would require a separate graph line
> for each question, of which I have approximately 50, which is too many
> for such a graph.
> 
> -grmeanby- is useful too, but it also will only summarize data for a
> single variable.
> 
> I'm thinking if I could turn my column variables into row values I'd be
> able to get what I want. So I could have a table like so:
> 
> |   question   |   median_1999   |   median_2001   |   etc, for each
> year  
> |      1       |       2         |       3         |      
> |      2       |       4         |       5         |                    
> 
> then the line graph would be trivial.
> 
> I might need to consider another visualization method.
> 
> And thanks for the suggestion on the mean.
> 
> On Apr 27, 2010, at 2:12 PM, Nick Cox wrote:
> 
>> No; I would use -collapse- first. 
>> 
>> collapse (p50) question*, by(year) 
>> 
>> After that, it's just a -line- plot. I'd put year on the x axis; any
>> other design may seem less intuitive to your readership. 
>> 
>> By the way, even though the data are Likert scales, in my experience
>> means in practice often do a much better job of summarising level
>> (regardless of measurement theory). 
> 
> Jeremy Voros
> 
>> Stata newbie here with a question I'm having trouble finding an answer
>> for. I would like to create a line graph with variables along the
> x-axis
>> and their median on the y-axis, with a different line for each
> variable
>> based on the cohort year. Here's the details:
>> 
>> My database of likert-scale survey data looks basically like this:
>> 
>> |      id     |     year     |     question1     |      question2
> |
>> question3     |     etc...
>> |      5      |     1999     |         1         |          4
> |
>> 3         |            
>> |      5      |     2001     |         3         |          4
> |
>> 2         |
>> |      6      |     1999     |         3         |          5
> |
>> 4         |
>> 
>> 
>> So ultimately I'd like a graph with question1, question2...questionX
>> along the x-axis, and the median of each variable on the y-axis, with
> a
>> different line for each year.
>> 
>> I feel like it should involve tabstat or reshape somehow, but can't
>> manage to work it out. Any help appreciated.
> 
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