st: -copydesc- or -clonevar- that behaves reasonably for factor variables

[Ryan Turner <rjturner@cmu.edu>]

Dear Statalist,

I am trying to standardize my regressors, but because N differ somewhat significantly across models, I must standardize for each model.  I previously wrote a hackish program to create and standardize tempvar copies of model variables, but as this did not support factor variables I also maintained all my factor variables as real variables in the data set (-gen s_var1 = s.var1-, -gen i_dum1 = i.dum1-).  This has gotten too tedious, and I am trying to update my hackish program to support factor variables.

I have tried -fvrevar- with some success, except that as far as I can tell there is no way to retain factor variables' identity (label) in the output (output shows tempvar names __00000N and not a label describing the variables those tempvars were copied from).  Unless I can retain variable identity (I have a lot of factor variables, and I am producing directly to LaTeX output tables with -eststo- and -esttab-), fvrevar is all but useless to me.  Non-prototyping use cases of -fvrevar- are appreciated.

I have some hope with fvexpand, which allows me to explicitly describe each variable (including levels of an indicator, e.g. i(0).dum1).  In essence I am reimplementing fvrevar (as I understand it) to maintain the variable label.  I used Nick Cox's -copydesc- in the old version of my program, but of course this does not support factor variables.

I recognize it does not make sense to copy/clone a factor variable.  I want a function that simply does what Stata's factor-variable-supporting regression functions do: generate appropriate labels for factor variables.  For example, the output of -regress s.y s.x- will contain "S.y" and "S.x".  So for example, -copydesc s.var s_var- would copy "Var Label" to s_var as "S.Var Label".  Of course I don't think upgrading old, faithful -copydesc- (to support factor variables) is the goal here, but you get the idea.

Does such a function exist?  Specifically, I want to copy the description of a variable, or clone it to a tempvar, and have it act sensibly when 'variable' is a factor variable (e.g., output "S.variable")?  Any thoughts are appreciated.  I can't imagine this task is so uncommon (strictly speaking, it should not so hard, but it certainly taxes my merely moderate Stata programming ability).

Sincerely,
Ryan

--
Ryan J. Turner, M.S. <rjturner cmu edu>
Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
+1-412-304-5014 (C) | +1-484-483-3244 (GV)


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