Transforming a Categorical Variable into Separate Variables

[Sheetal Saklani]

I am working with factory-year panel data wherein information about many variables (for e.g. wages, employment, rural/urban, etc.) is gathered for different factories in the country for every year. In this data set, there is a variable 'x' which has 9 categories (1,2,...,9). It looks something like this:

Year	Factory ID	X	Category S.No.
2009	118F	10	1
2009	118F	16	2
2009	118F	31	3
2009	118F	90	4
2009	118F	54	5
2009	118F	17	6
2009	118F	62	7
2009	118F	57	8
2009	118F	51	9
2009	202F	83	1
2009	202F	39	2
2009	202F	44	3
2009	202F	54	4
2009	202F	12	5

For the purpose of my analysis, however, I require the 9 categories to be separate variables in the following format:

Year	Factory ID	X1	X2	X3	X4	X5	X6	X7	X8	X9	.
2009	118F	10	16	31	90	54	17	62	57	51	.
2009	202F	83	39	44	54	12	20	20	20	20	.

How do I get to this? I would be extremely grateful for any guidance in this matter.

[Hong Il Yoo]

hi sheetal, you can have a look at -help reshape- and consult examples that say "Convert the data back from long form to wide form (explicit way)."

[Sheetal Saklani]

Thank you for your help. Reshaping the data did the trick.