how do I generate a variable containing frequencies on two similar variables?

[Lars Lehrmann]

Hello

Im am new to STATA.
I have a dataset that contains data from different surveys on similar categorical variables called gop_studsoc_sch and gop_studsoc_bgu. The variables use the same scale 1”high priority” to 6 “low priority”. I would like to collapse these variables into a single variable with frequency distribution. I have found a command stack that does exactly that:
stack gop_studsoc_sch gop_studsoc_bgu, into (gop_studsoc_sch_bgu)

But doing this I lose all the other variables in my dataset. Do I then need to save this new variable as a dataset and then merge it with the old dataset to keep the other variables in the dataset or is there an easier way?

The data looks like this for the two variables:

tabm gop_studsoc_sch gop_studsoc_bgu, transpose

Values	gop_studsoc_sch	gop_studsoc_bgu	Total
1	1	5	6
2	17	11	28
3	30	36	66
4	25	16	41
5	16	12	28
6	5	9	14
Total	94	89	183

Total is in short the variable (gop_studsoc_sch_bgu) I would like to create but keeping all other the variables in my dataset.

Best regards
Lars

[Nick Cox]

tabm (tab_chi, SSC) that you have used (but not cited: see FAQ Advice #12) has an option replace to save its results to a new dataset.

I don't understand what you expect a merge to achieve here.