Re: st: Disaggregating the values taken by a Stata variable

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

We ask list members to use full real names.

I am not clear what you are seeking here. A given observation can hold
one and one value for a given variable. In the case of a string
variable nothing stops that being anything  for a string value you
like subject to the limitations on string variable size.

In your situation data on region and sub-region would be held
naturally in two variables. To add more detail, I suspect that you are
reaching for a technique such as is described in

FAQ     . . . . . . . . . . . Defining group characteristics to create subsets
        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. F. Baum
        7/11    How do you efficiently define group characteristics
                in your data in order to create subsets?
                http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data-management/
                group-characteristics-for-subsets/

One solution lies in adding more variables but you can set up a
translation through -merge-. But to add detail, you need to add
detail; there is no way to escape that.
Nick
njcoxstata@gmail.com


On 31 May 2013 12:21,  Ruolz  <arir03@uqo.ca> wrote:

> I would like to know if it is possible to assign more than one value to a Stata variable under the same condition. Here is my problem:
>
> In my dataset, I have a variable called “economic_region”. I would like to:
>
> 1) assign sub-regions to each of these economic regions
> 2) assign Postal Codes (PC) or Forward Sortation Area (FSA: the first three characters of the PC) to each of these sub-regions (in order to be able to do a "many to one" match later).
>
> In other words, I would like to disaggregate these economic regions. Note that I know the list of the sub-regions for a given economic region and I also know the list of the FSA for a given sub-region, but this information is not in my dataset and I would like to include it. If I had the reverse problem (aggregation), it would be easy for me to solve. For ex, suppose that I wanted to create the economic region named Ottawa from three sub-regions: Nepean, Kanata, Rockland, it wouldbe:
>
> gen str10 economic_region = ”Ottawa” if sub_region == “Nepean” | sub_region == “Kanata” | sub_region == “Rockland”
>
> But, I want to disaggregate instead. I have the economic region named Ottawa and I want to create three sub-regions from it: Nepean, Kanata, Rockland. I thought I could do that by assigning multiple values to the variable called sub-region. I know how to assign more than one value to a Stata variable under different conditions, but I don’t know how to assign more than one value to a Stata variable under the same condition (or if this is even possible!).  Can you tell me if it is possible to do that in Stata and how? I would appreciate your help on this matter.
>

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