Speaking Stata: On Structure and Shape: The Case of Multiple Responses

Abstract

A frequent problem in data management is that datasets may not arrive in the best structure for many analyses, so that it may be necessary to restructure the data in some way. The particular case of multiple response data is discussed at length, with special attention to different possible structures; the generation of new variables holding the data in different form; valuable inbuilt string and egen functions; using foreach and forvalues to loop over lists; and the use of the reshape command. Tabulations and graphics for such data are also reviewed briefly.