V-Dem+ESS merge

[Leeloz Lazgin]

Hello,

I am trying to merge ESS dataset with V-Dem, can anyone advise on how to prepare them before I merge, my unit of analysis is country-year, so Do I need to unify anything other than country names ?

And how can I eliminate observations I dont need in V-dem, like certain countries, and years, that dont match the ESS dataset ?

Thanks

[Clyde Schechter]

Your question has gone unanswered for nearly a day now. I saw it early on and passed it over because the post does not provide enough information to support anything but a vague, probably unhelpful, answer.

I suggest you will have better luck if you post back with the following modifications:

1. This is a multidisciplinary international Forum for Stata users. While I'm sure there are some here who know what ESS and V-Dem are, most of us probably don't. (Personally, I've heard of the ESS but don't know anything at all about its data structure, and have never heard of V-Dem.) So you should explain briefly what these are, if it's relevant to your question. If not, you could just refer to them as two data sets. In general, it is wise here to avoid abbreviations and jargon unless they would be familiar to any college educated person anywhere in the world. The only common knowledge it is safe to assume here is basic statistics and some familiarity with Stata.
2. Show example data from both data sets. Preferably, pick the examples so that some of the observations in them will match up. The example data will enable whoever responds to grasp whatever issues the data sets present for combining and deal with them in their response. Please be sure to use the -dataex- command to show your example data, so that the examples will faithfully replicate the structure and metadata of your originals. This is important to assure that whatever code you are shown in response will be workable in your real data sets. (What may seem to you like "the same data" may actually be very different to Stata. That's why it's so important to use -dataex- to show the examples: -dataex- preserves all the necessary details. Hand-wrought tables and screenshots do not.)

If you are running version 18, 17, 16 or a fully updated version 15.1 or 14.2, -dataex- is already part of your official Stata installation. If not, run -ssc install dataex- to get it. Either way, run -help dataex- to read the simple instructions for using it. -dataex- will save you time; it is easier and quicker than typing out tables. It includes complete information about aspects of the data that are often critical to answering your question but cannot be seen from tabular displays or screenshots. It also makes it possible for those who want to help you to create a faithful representation of your example to try out their code, which in turn makes it more likely that their answer will actually work in your data.