Help using the browse (br) command using if

[Chris Boulis]

Hi StataList.

How can I use the browse command to display certain observations from four specific waves of data (panel data)? When I enter the following, the br window is empty.

br xwaveid edlev empstat marstat if wave==4 & wave==7 & wave==10 & wave==14

My error is surely in the 'if' part of the command, so any help is kindly appreciated.

Best, Chris

[Nick Cox]

You want | (or) not & (and).

You’re thinking that you want several waves, but Stata works observation-wise and a wave can’t be equal to two different values.

[Nick Cox]

#2 was posted in a 5-minute gap in teaching.

 
 br xwaveid edlev empstat marstat if inlist(wave, 4, 7, 10, 14)

is another way to do it.

[Chris Boulis]

Thank you Nick Cox that worked a charm.

[Phil Bromiley]

Chris - one problem with your original statement was that you used & so it would only evaluate to true if wave equaled all those values at once (which it obviously cannot do).

br xwaveid edlev empstat marstat if wave==4 | wave==7 | wave==10 | wave==14 might work (I haven't checked it).

[Nick Cox]

#5 will work. It's equivalent to #2 and #3.

The difficulty with #1 is that what you mean is closer to

(br xwaveid edlev empstat marstat if wave==4)  & (br xwaveid edlev empstat marstat if wave== 7)  ...

That isn't legal, at all, but the fix as said is to use |

[Chris Boulis]

Thank you Nick Cox and Phil Bromiley for your clarification/help. It is very much appreciated.