Counting string variable

[Frederik Thorbjoern]

Hello
I have a variable called parent with the name of the parent firm. I want to make a descriptive statistic of number of entries. Therefore I need to count how many times a company name in the variable "parent" is listed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times and in the interval 10-20 and 20-30. However, I'm having trouble doing this. Any suggestions?
Best regards, Frederik

[Ken Chui]

What did you do and what exactly was the trouble? Please read section 12 of the FAQ (http://www.statalist.org/forums/help) regarding posting sample data using dataex.

Without knowing anything, collapse would be a potential candidate:

clear
input str5 comp
a
a
a
b
b
c
c
d
d
d
d
e
e
e
e
end

gen freq = 1

collapse (sum) freq, by(comp)

recode freq (1/3 = 1 "1-3 times") (4/6 = 2 "4-6 times"), gen(freq_cat)

list

Results:

     +-------------------------+
     | comp   freq    freq_cat |
     |-------------------------|
  1. |    a      3   1-3 times |
  2. |    b      2   1-3 times |
  3. |    c      2   1-3 times |
  4. |    d      4   4-6 times |
  5. |    e      4   4-6 times |
     +-------------------------+

[George Ford]

not sure exactly what you're asking, but something like this might be a start.

egen parentN = count(parent)

If you want an indicator by values of that, then recode would work..

g parentG = parentN

recode parentG (11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 = 20) (21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 = 30)

clear
set obs 30
g parentN = _n
g parentG = parentN
recode parentG (11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 = 20) (21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 = 30)