Re: st: detecting a complete data set

[Maarten buis <maartenbuis@yahoo.co.uk>]

--- On Tue, 16/11/10, Donald Spady wrote:
> I assume that if complete takes the value 0 that there
> are missing data, and if it takes the value 1 then the
> data are complete.

Yes, I use the convention that 1 equals "true" or "on" 
and 0 equals "false" or "off". So if an observation has
a 1 on the variable complete then it is complete, and 
when it has a 0 than it is not complete. 

> I am unsure about the grammer of "gen byte complete =
> totmis == 0"  Does this mean "generate complete = 1 IF
> totmis == 0"

No, you can read this command as follows:
gen byte complete = ( totmis == 0 )

The logical statement -( totmis == 0 )- returns a 1 if it
is true and a 0 if it is false.

An alternative way of creating this variable would be:
gen byte complete = cond( totmis == 0, 1, 0 )

see -help cond- for this latter solution.

Hope this helps,
Maarten

--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany

http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------


      

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