All variables missing when grouping dummy variables

[Sam Jones]

Hi

I am very new to Stata, and have found this website very helpful so far, but have not been able to find the answer to my current problem. I am attempting to group dummy variables from a dataset. I have identified the populist party in each country, but want to group them so I can analyse their combined effect (simply populist parties as one, rather than individually running each specific populist party). In other words, I am just looking for the selected variables to =1, and all others=0. I have used:

egen newvar = group(pp1 pp2 pp3 pp4...etc)

which creates the group, but all variables are then missing.

-------------------------------------------------------
| Freq. Percent Valid Cum.
----------+--------------------------------------------
Missing . | 4092 100.00
-------------------------------------------------------

I am sure its a rudimentary mistake, but I have been browsing this site and various articles for an answer for the past few hours and haven't found any solutions.

Any advice however basic is most welcome.

Thanks
Sam

[Nick Cox]

I don't really follow what you're trying to do, but I think first we need to see a data example for some of those variables.