Tagging duplicates (ok) BUT only keeping one line of information

[Rose Matthews]

Hello, I’ve made some progress over the course of the day and would like some help. Dataset found below:


I have tagged the rows that have duplicate information for each id in terms of oks and the components of another scar (pain and scar).

For duplicates >0 I would like to keep one row of information.


Therefore for ID 13, I would just like to keep one row, this will be left in the dataset with ID12


If I use

/Problem: Drop the one of these duplicate lines ****

drop if duplicatescores == 1 // drops all

keep if duplicatescores ==1 //drops ID12

This will drop or keep all the rows…


Is there another alternative solution where I just keep one row of data for ID = 13 and ID12 is left with the dataset







Dataset:

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex

clear

input float id str2 id2 float(pain scar surgdate oks gender preop_date recpreop_date postop_date recpostop_date operationdate) byte(_merge duplicatescores)

12 "1A" 1 1 22555 40 1 22533 22289 22770 22771 22555 3 0

13 "2B" 1 9 11962  1 2 11933 11933 11963 11782 11962 3 0

13 "2B" 1 9 11962 48 2 11932 11951 11963 11782 11962 3 1

13 "2B" 1 9 11962 48 2 11932     .     .     .     . . 1

end

format %td surgdate

format %td preop_date

format %td recpreop_date

format %td postop_date

format %td recpostop_date

format %td operationdate

label values _merge _merge

label def _merge 3 "Matched (3)", modify

[Rich Goldstein]

h duplicates

especially "duplicates drop"

[Rose Matthews]

Hmm ! Didn't work as I wanted to...


Current dataset - I would expect Stata to keep the UNIQUE values and KEEP the first row of duplicates. So I would have expected Stata to keep ID 12 and the red boxes from ID 13

When I use the code:

//For those with duplicates in the score components
duplicates tag (oks pain scar), gen(duplicatescores)
duplicates drop duplicatescores, force

It drops the Unique Value of ID 13 where duplicatesscores = 0 and keeps the first row of duplicates (which is what I want)

Is there a way to do both ? i.E Keep the unique values & keep the first row of duplicates?

I tried this:

keep if duplicatescores == 0 & duplicates drop duplicatesscores, force
// This didn't work