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Re: st: master labeling file of a string variable
From
Richard Goldstein <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
Subject
Re: st: master labeling file of a string variable
Date
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:38:06 -0400
I think that Nick made a typo here - you can attach value labels to a
numeric variable but cannot attach value labels to a string variable
Rich
On 7/26/11 7:10 AM, Nick Cox wrote:
> You can't attach value labels to a numeric variable.
>
> Nick
>
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 6:59 PM, Lucie Vlach
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hello everyone!
>>
>> I have a problem trying to design a “master labelling file” that will label string values for me, uniformly, as I acquire datasets over time.
>>
>> I want to label values of a string variable. There are about 90 possible values at this time that I could have, but not all datasets that I will have, will utilize all full 90 labels. I could have a data set that will only use 26 of the 90 possible value labels. And some future datasets can use more.
>>
>> I want to be able to set up this 90-label file and draw on it when I am using a do file and appending the new data to a master file.
>>
>> I think the string variable gets assigned a number based on the size of the dataset at that time. Data set that has 20 unique values gets 1-20 numbers assigned, and the next dataset could only be 15, so 1-15 gets assigned, and so on, but 5 on one set is not 5 on the other set.
>>
>> encode Health_Service_Code, gen(HSC_num)
>> label define hsclabel ........
>> 03.03A "Office visit not requiring complete (Automatic increase by 20% if>75)"
>> 03.04A "Comprehensive visit physical q180d"
>> 03.04J "Development documentation and admin of comprehensive SNIP office"
>> 03.03B "Prenatal visit"
>> 03.03C "Post-partum visit"
>> ETC....
>> label values HSC_num hsclabel
>>
>> I want to make sure, that I always end up with ‘03.03B "Prenatal visit"’ to be value 4 and ‘03.03C "Post-partum visit"’ as 5 and then it would be easy to label 5 as "Post-partum visit" etc etc…
>>
>> I would love to have the full 90 item label file as something my do files would access before appending to the master. Is this possible to do?
>>
>> Thank you all very much for your time. Much appreciated!
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