Beginner queston/ sum across multiple variables within one row

[Resa Pfu]

Dear all,

I am a first time Stata user for my master thesis. My dataset has 304 observations and I am working with a checklist. Each checklist step is a variable (Step1-10), that has categorical value (completed vs not completed) but is coded as 1(completed) and 0(not completed).
My aim is to in the end be able to say that on average x/10 checklist steps were completed per observation. I thought I would start by calculating the amount of steps completed per observation. I was trying to generate a new variable for this (Checklist Score) that would give me the sum of the values over Step1-Step10 in each row.
I tried:
egen x=rowtotal (Step1-Step10)
but this seemes to show me something different.

If anyone has a tip I would be very grateful.

Resa

[Nick Cox]

Your new variable should vary between 0 and 10 depending on the values 0, 1 or just possibly missing in each variable. As documented missings are treated as if 0 (so ignored) except that the missing option obliges missing to be given as result if all values are missing.

If you think you're seeing something different, please give a data example where that happens.

[Resa Pfu]

Thank you for your reply. It does actually work with this code, I just had some accidental values of 98 for N/A in my dataset!