Labelling dummy variables with underlying variable names

[Christian Fischer]

Hey there,

I'm very new to Stata and fairly certain this has a simple solution but i don't seem to find it.

I have a Dataset with 200 different regions and want to create Dummies for each of the regions. I want to label the dummies according to the name of the region.


When doing as below I only get another round of R_1 all the way to R_200 as Dummies. What goes into region in order to not use the numeric labelling but the actual names of the region as a label for the dummies?

levelsof region, local(region)
foreach i of numlist `region' {
gen R_`i'=region==`i'
}


Thanks in advance guys!

Cheers

[Nick Cox]

help tabulate

-- but it's unlikely that you really need all those variables any way. Use factor variable notation.

[Christian Fischer]

Being new to the matter I don't see where this is supposed to lead me. Could you be more specific?

[Nick Cox]

Everyone here, new or old or ancient, is asked to try to read the documentation first as explained at http://www.statalist.org/forums/help#before That underlines that help and search are your friends here.

Did you type

help tabulate 

search factor variable

?

Clicking through will tell you that tabulate has a generate() option for generating indicator variables and that (e.g.) help fvvarlist tells you about factor variable notation as a way of avoiding indicator variables. (You say dummy variables.)

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Just in case you need to transform the labels somehow, here is the direct code:

// your data goes here
sysuse nlsw88, clear

local vname "occupation"
local root "o_"
keep `vname'

// my code is here
levelsof `vname', local(levs)
local dctname `:value label `vname''
foreach i of numlist `levs' {
  generate byte `root'`i'=`vname'==`i'
  label variable `root'`i' "`:label `dctname' `i''"
}

// show the result
describe

Produces:

  obs:         2,246                          NLSW, 1988 extract
 vars:            14                          1 May 2011 22:52
 size:        31,444                          (_dta has notes)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage   display    value
variable name   type    format     label      variable label
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
occupation      byte    %22.0g     occlbl     occupation
o_1             byte    %8.0g                 Professional/technical
o_2             byte    %8.0g                 Managers/admin
o_3             byte    %8.0g                 Sales
o_4             byte    %8.0g                 Clerical/unskilled
o_5             byte    %8.0g                 Craftsmen
o_6             byte    %8.0g                 Operatives
o_7             byte    %8.0g                 Transport
o_8             byte    %8.0g                 Laborers
o_9             byte    %8.0g                 Farmers
o_10            byte    %8.0g                 Farm laborers
o_11            byte    %8.0g                 Service
o_12            byte    %8.0g                 Household workers
o_13            byte    %8.0g                 Other
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:

Use Nick's advice if you are not transforming the value labels anyhow.

Best, Sergiy Radyakin

[Christian Fischer]

Thanks Sergiy!