Reverse Command

[holly ellis]

I am trying to reverse the order of some categorical variables in my dataset. There was previously a command "revrs" that would do this automatically. However, this command appears to be unrecognized by the current version of STATA, STATABE. Does anyone know of a new command or a similar action to take? The data is coded 1-5, however, some of my variables are coded least to greatest while others are greatest to least, all with the same values coded just opposite orders. I know I could manually recode each variable, but I am looking for a quicker more efficient way to do so.

[George Ford]

help recode

[George Ford]

for multiple variables:

foreach var in x1 x2 x3 x4 {
    recode `var' (1 = 5) (2 = 4) (3 = 3) (4 = 2) (5 = 1)
}

[daniel klein]

revrs is a community-contributed command from SSC; you need to install it before you can use it. Make sure to read the help file carefully; the command does not reverse the values but only their order and might mess up the value labels. There are alternatives, which also have pitfalls.

[daniel klein]

Although it is often overlooked, recode allows a variable list; no loop is needed.

recode x1 x2 x3 x4 (1 = 5) ... (5 = 1)

[George Ford]

What Daniel said...