Generate standardized values within subgroups

[Pratap Pundir]

I have survey data across several countries and it seems like the responses on ordinal scale have different spreads for different countries.
Hence, instead of standardizing across the board, I would like to standardize by country.
Unfortunately, egen x = std(y), by country doesn't work as std can not be used with by.
Any suggestions?

Also, I have more than 700 variables...is there any more efficient way than to write an egen for every single variable?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Joro Kolev]

Why -egen, std()- is not byable is a mystery to me. But it is not a big issue, both -egen, mean- and -egen, sd()- are byable, and standardised value = (value - mean)/standard deviation).

See here how this is done:

https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...iple-variables

[Joro Kolev]

I mean see the code by Nick Cox at the link I posted above.

As to the issue that you have 700 variable, see the link below on how you can refer to lists of variables without naming them one by one:

https://www.stata.com/support/faqs/d...ple-variables/

[Nick Cox]

Joro's positive suggestions about code are fine in terms of giving what you ask for. But I can't see any good reasons for standardizing here. You're throwing away much of the information in the data thereby.

[Pratap Pundir]

Thank you!

Nick, I was also thinking of running regressions per country, so standardizing per country could be useful for that.

[Pratap Pundir]

As to the issue that you have 700 variable, see the link below on how you can refer to lists of variables without naming them one by one:

https://www.stata.com/support/faqs/d...ple-variables/

But can I generate variables with wildcards? I guess I could always forloop and include the counter in the new variable name...