In Stata, I would like to be able to bring value labels up into variable labels when reshaping wide.
My raw data looks like this:
patient hosp_id hosp_name charges
Andrew 1 Springfield General $10
Barry 1 Springfield General $20
Crista 2 Lincoln Medical Center $10
Doris 2 Lincoln Medical Center $15
Ellen 1 Springfield General $15
Faye 3 Memorial Hospital $35
I then label the values of hosp_id and reshape wide.
label define hosp_names 1 "Springfield General" 2 "Lincoln Medical Center" 3 "Memorial Hospital"
label value hosp_id hosp_names
reshape wide charges, i(patient) j(hosp_id)
I would like the labels that I placed on hosp_id to follow their associated values and become variable labels. I know that I can label the variables one by one after reshaping, but this may be impractical with a much larger set of j values (in this case hospitals). How can I label each of the hosp_id variables with the associated value of hosp_name programmatically?
In general, applying reshape and also carrying across variable or value labels can be awkward, but see documentation at http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data-management/apply-labels-after-reshape/ for detailed discussion.
In your case, what your reshape code does is to work on charges and make a separate variable for each distinct hospital. (Your question states: How can I label each of the hosp_id variables with the associated value of hosp_name programmatically? but hosp_id is carried over unchanged.)
There is a much more direct way to do that using separate. Here is an example almost identical to yours.
. input str6 patient hosp_id str22 hosp_name charges
patient hosp_id hosp_name charges
1. "Andrew" 1 "Springfield General" 10
2. "Barry" 1 "Springfield General" 20
3. "Crista" 2 "Lincoln Medical Center" 10
4. "Doris" 2 "Lincoln Medical Center" 15
5. "Ellen" 1 "Springfield General" 15
6. "Faye" 3 "Memorial Hospital" 35
7. end
. separate charges, by(hosp_name) veryshortlabel
storage display value
variable name type format label variable label
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
charges1 byte %9.0g Lincoln Medical Center
charges2 byte %9.0g Memorial Hospital
charges3 byte %9.0g Springfield General
The option veryshortlabel is undocumented in help and manuals, but useful here. It is not compulsory, naturally. There was a mention in http://www.stata-journal.com/sjpdf.html?articlenum=gr0023 In essence, veryshortlabel was an after-thought after separate was first written.
Short, simple and gets the job done: install varlab module, more info from https://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s425001.html
ssc install varlab
1 .Then just save your variable labels
varlab save [varlist] using filename [, replace ]
- Once your dataset reshaped, load them
varlab load [varlist] using filename [, replace ]
Hint: if as usually the variable names change after reshaping( "var_year01" ,"var year_02" in wide form TO "var_" in long form ) , just open the label file(filename) created in 1. and modify the names using the Do editor.
Good Luck
