Labelling values by importing information from .csv file

[Shruti Sheopurkar]

Hello,
We collected survey data on over 12,000 respondents across several hundred districts. The districts, however, are in their district id format- a 3 digit number ranging from 000 to 729. Excerpt below:

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input long UID int district
331785 557
331798 556
331799 566
331745 556
331811 564
331818 560
331803 549
331825 553
331824 556
331829 556
331832 566
331836 577
331837 567
331822 556
331839 573
331813 577
278950 546
278952 575
278965 575
278966 575
278971 575
278974 563
278982 575
278987 576
278990 547
278991 577
278979 562
279010 577
279012 576
305539 577
305507 562
end

I have, in a CSV, the corresponding district names for each of these district IDs. How can I encode these? Is there a way other than la define and typing all the information into a do file?

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input int district_id str26 district_name
  1 "Nicobar"                
  2 "North Middle Andaman"   
  3 "South Andaman"          
  4 "Anantapur"              
  5 "Chittoor"               
  6 "East Godavari"          
  7 "Guntur"                 
  8 "Kadapa"                 
  9 "Krishna"                
 10 "Kurnool"                
 11 "Nellore"                
 12 "Prakasam"               
 13 "Srikakulam"             
 14 "Visakhapatnam"          
 15 "Vizianagaram"           
 16 "West Godavari"          
 17 "Anjaw"                  
 18 "Central Siang"          
 19 "Changlang"              
 20 "Dibang Valley"          
 21 "East Kameng"            
 22 "East Siang"             
 23 "Kamle"                  
 24 "Kra Daadi"              
 25 "Kurung Kumey"           
 26 "Lepa Rada"              
 27 "Lohit"                  
 28 "Longding"               
 29 "Lower Dibang Valley"    
 30 "Lower Siang"            
 31 "Lower Subansiri"        
 32 "Namsai"                 
 33 "Pakke Kessang"          
 34 "Papum Pare"             
 35 "Shi Yomi"               
 36 "Tawang"                 
 37 "Tirap"                  
 38 "Upper Siang"            
 39 "Upper Subansiri"        
 40 "West Kameng"            
 41 "West Siang"             
 42 "Baksa"                  
 43 "Barpeta"                
 44 "Biswanath"              
 45 "Bongaigaon"             
 46 "Cachar"                 
 47 "Charaideo"              
 48 "Chirang"                
 49 "Darrang"                
 50 "Dhemaji"                
 51 "Dhubri"                 
 52 "Dibrugarh"              
 53 "Dima Hasao"             
 54 "Goalpara"               
 55 "Golaghat"               
 56 "Hailakandi"             
 57 "Hojai"                  
 58 "Jorhat"                 
 59 "Kamrup"                 
 60 "Kamrup Metropolitan"    
 61 "Karbi Anglong"          
 62 "Karimganj"              
 63 "Kokrajhar"              
 64 "Lakhimpur"              
 65 "Majuli"                 
 66 "Morigaon"               
 67 "Nagaon"                 
 68 "Nalbari"                
 69 "Sivasagar"              
 70 "Sonitpur"               
 71 "South Salmara-Mankachar"
 72 "Tinsukia"               
 73 "Udalguri"               
 74 "West Karbi Anglong"     
 75 "Araria"                 
 76 "Arwal"                  
 77 "Aurangabad"             
 78 "Banka"                  
 79 "Begusarai"              
 80 "Bhagalpur"              
 81 "Bhojpur"                
 82 "Buxar"                  
 83 "Darbhanga"              
 84 "East Champaran"         
 85 "Gaya"                   
 86 "Gopalganj"              
 87 "Jamui"                  
 88 "Jehanabad"              
 89 "Kaimur"                 
 90 "Katihar"                
 91 "Khagaria"               
 92 "Kishanganj"             
 93 "Lakhisarai"             
 94 "Madhepura"              
 95 "Madhubani"              
 96 "Munger"                 
 97 "Muzaffarpur"            
 98 "Nalanda"                
 99 "Nawada"                 
100 "Patna"                  
end

Thanks, would really appreciate help on this.

[Nick Cox]

See this very recent thread https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...t-value-labels with exactly the same problem. One trick is to convert your .csv file to a do-file defining the value labels. Another trick is read the labels in as a separate dataset and then merge.

[daniel klein]

If you want a value label, then you will have to define that value label; there are many ways of automating this. One way is merge-ing the two files, using district_id as an identifier. Then use labmask (part of labutil on SSC; originally appeared in Cox 2008) to use the (string) values of district_name as a value label for district_id (or a copy of it). Alternatively, you could use elabel (SSC) for the second step.

Here is a fictional example based on the original example

// example data; after merge
clear
input long UID int district_id str26 district_name
123456  1 "Nicobar"                   
789012 42 "Baksa"
345678 42 "Baksa"
901234 73 "Udalguri"                             
end

// look at data
list

// make a copy of district_id
generate district = district_id

// create and assign value label (labmask)
*ssc install labutil
labmask district , values(district_name)

// create and assign value label (elabel)
*ssc install elabel
*elabel define district:district = levels(district_id district_name)

// look at results
list
describe
label list

Best
Daniel


Cox, N. J. 2008. Speaking Stata: Between tables and graphs. The Stata Journal, 8(2): 269--289.