cutt-off missing data

[abdelilah arredouani]

Dear statlisters,
i have a data set with 1500 observation and 60 variables. the highest percentage of missing data is 7.8% (see attached). do i need to impute the missing data in this case. some literature suggests it is not necessary bu i am not sure.

stata 15.1 on mac

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Abdelilah:
please see the FAQ about attachments.
That said, (multiple) imputation of missing data depends on the underlying missing mechanism (that you do not mention in your post).
Unfortunately, there's no a percentage cut-off (if this is what you mean in your post) that you can invoke to justify your leaving missing data untreated.
In general, discarding observations with missing values is not a good

[Marcos Almeida]

Just as a side note, you can do a sensitivity analysis and compare the complete-case estimations with the imputed ones.