PC Labs for SO5041: Week 4

generate varname = expression is used to create new variables. The varname is the name of new variable that will be created. The expression is any mathematical expression, but often you will want to base it on existing variables. For instance:

generate three = 2 + 1
gen mark = markpct/100
gen total = part1 + part2 + part3

Lots of arithmetical, statistical, mathematical and other functions are available. Enter help functions to get an overview. This is a simple example, that creates a new variable that is the square root of the first:

gen sqrootx = sqrt(x) 

Load the data file week4.dta (this is an extract from the 2016 European Social Survey for Ireland):

use http://teaching.sociology.ul.ie/so5041/labs/week4

Make a new variable that is the difference between the respondent's work hours and his/her partner's work hours (wkhtot and wkhtotp).

Summarise the variable. Hint: use the commands summarize and hist. Compare the distributions of the difference according to the respondent's gender (variable gndr).

We can also recode variables to give them more convenient values. For instance, if we have age in years (agea in the Week 4 data) we could recode it into groups as follows:

gen agegr = agea
recode agegr 0/15=1 16/20=2 20/35=3 36/50=4 51/999=5
label define agg 1 "0/15" 2 "16/20" 3 "20/35" 4 "36/50" 5 "Over 50"
label values agegr agg

Note that the label commands are not necessary, but are very helpful. If you make a habit of putting them in, it makes your work self-documenting.

I am making a strong assumption that age is in whole years here. For instance, if someone in the data set is recorded as 15.5 years, their value won't be changed. If the groups overlap (e.g., 0/15=1 15/20=2) this won't be a problem, even though it appears ambiguous. Values are assigned according to the first part that applies to them, so in this case 15 year-olds go into category 1, not category 2 (if someone is recorded as 15.5 they go into category 2).

Sometimes, categorical variables have several small categories, which we might like to lump together. Do tab prtvtbie to see an example of this using voting behaviour. We may want to group all the small parties together for simplicity. Do tab prtvtbie, nolabel to see what the numbers behind the labels are (another way to do this would be label list prtvtbie). Categories 8, 9 and 10 are very small and could usefully be lumped together. Recode them all to the same value (10 is good, because it already has the label "Other"). Tabulate the variable again.

Note that if you simple recode prtvtbie you will lose the original values, so it is often a good idea to create a new variable as a copy of the original, and to recode that. You can then apply the old labels to the new variable by label values /newvar prtvtbie (the name of the labels is often the same as the name of the variable; if it is not, the command describe will show names of variables and names of labels).

Missing values are usually coded as numbers which will not occur in reality. Thus for instance, if people refuse to give their age, their response may be coded 999 or -9: these are impossible values for age so there is no confusion. For income, 999 would not do because it could be a real value. When missing values are used like this it is very important that Stata knows they are not meaningful values, and thus it is necessary to declare them.

Download the data file http://teaching.sociology.ul.ie/so5041/labs/week4raw.dta and load it into Stata:

clear
use http://teaching.sociology.ul.ie/so5041/labs/week4raw

This is the same file as above but with missing values included. Numbers too big for the range are used to represent missing.

• Use summarize to look at the distribution of agea. Note the minimum and the mean.
• Now declare the missing values: recode agea 999=.. Stata uses "." to indicate missing.
• Re-run the summary and note the difference.

Because the 999s were treated as valid values the first time, the mean was much higher. When they are excluded, the mean falls and the number of cases falls.

Stata has two useful keywords for selecting cases, if and in. These restrict the command to a certain subset of cases (e.g., if sex==2) or a certain range (e.g., in 1/100). For instance, compare the output of list to list in 1/10.

If we want to restrict analysis to women only, we can use if:

clear
use http://teaching.sociology.ul.ie/so5041/labs/week4
su wkhtot if gndr==2
tab prtvtbie if gndr==2

Note that we use == to test for equality. For not-equals we use !=, and note also >, <, <= etc. We can combine conditions too:

tab prtvtbie if gndr==2 & wkhtot<60
tab prtvtbie if gndr==2 & inrange(wkhtot,30,50)
tab prtvtbie gndr if prtvtbie==1 | prtvtbie==2

Using if and summarize, calculate the mean own work hours for men and women separately.