Converting String Variable to Binary Variable

[Kyla Mittal]

I have uploaded a data set from Excel into Stata and have a variable "D" that consists of "male" or "female". I would like to convert this into a dummy variable so male = 0 and female = 1. I already encoded it so I have D1 is D==Female and D2 is D==Male. How do I go about doing this?

[Rich Goldstein]

I don't understand what your last sentence means, but that is irrelevant; here is one way starting from the string variable:

gen byte female=D=="female"

if there are any missing data for gender, you might want to follow that up with

replace female=. if D==""

you probably then want to label your data so see

help label

[Philip Gigliotti]

generate sex = 0
replace sex = 1 if D == "female"
replace sex = . if D == .
destring  sex, replace force

[Niclas Kammler]

Hello,
I have var {-1;1} and I want to recode it so that I get a binomial var {0 for >=0; 1 for <0
How can I code that?
Thank you in advance!

[Rich Goldstein]

assuming that your "var" is numeric (please read the FAQ on how to ask questions), try the following:

gen byte newvar=var<0

if "var" has any missing values you will probably want to add:

replace newvar=. if var==.

if your original var is string, use -destring- first:

help destring

[Mike Lacy]

Also see -help recode-, which is surprisingly basic but underused.