asdoc: An easy way of creating publication quality tables from Stata commands

[Attaullah Shah]

I am really excited to announce the launch of my new program asdoc that sends Stata output to MS Word or RTF format. asdoc creates high-quality, publication-ready tables from various Stata commands such as summarize, correlate, pwcorr, tab1, tab2, tabulate1, tabulate2, tabstat, ttest, regress, table, amean, proportions, means, and many more. Using asdoc is pretty easy. We need to just add asdoc as a prefix to Stata commands [See this short blog entry for quick start]. asdoc has several built-in routines for dedicated calculations and making nicely formatted tables.

Installation
The program can be installed from SSC by typing the following in Stata command window:

ssc install asdoc, replace

Once installed, you can read the help file with

help asdoc

The help file is very generous in providing examples and discussions. It has 79 examples.



Key Features
Though the help file and my website page provide sufficient details on different aspects of the program, let me highlight the key features of the program below:

1. Nicely formatted tables for frequently used statistics
asdoc has dedicated routines for producing nicely formatted tables of most frequently used statistics such as summary statistics, correlations, regressions, frequency tables, and t-tests. Users can easily specify the number of decimal points, font size, table titles, column titles, and other aspects of these statistics.

2. Full and nested regression tables
asdoc can create two types of regression tables. The first type (call it detailed) is the detailed table that combines key statistics from the Stata's regression output with some additional statistics such as mean and standard deviation of the dependent variable etc. This table is the default option in asdoc. The second table is a compact table that nests more than one regressions in one table (call it nested). There also a YouTube video that shows how to create nested regression tables with asdoc. Both types of tables are publication-quality and can be directly used in research papers and theses, etc.

3. Writing all statistics to one document
asdoc provides the convenience of writing all statistics to a single document with its option append. Even it allows the construction of tables in pieces with its option rowappend. Further, it allows adding text or paragraphs with an option text. This is useful when we want to add details or comments with the Stata output.

4. Formatted tables of t-tests
The primary challenge in reporting results of the ttest command is what statistics to report and in which format to report. The format should be such that it occupies minimum space possible. Over many other possibilities, I preferred the format of a single line for all types of t-tests. Therefore, whether it is one-sample t-test or two-sample or other forms, asdocmanages to report the results line by line for each test. asdoc also allows accumulating results from different runs of t-tests. For this purpose, the option rowappend of asdocreally comes handy.

5. Frequency tables
asdoc has several built-in routines for reporting properly formatted frequency tables. As with other commands, we need to just add asdoc as a prefix to the tabulation commands that includes tabulate, tabulate1 tabulate2, tab1, and tab2, etc.

6. Compact tables
asdoc makes some elegant tables when used with tabstat command. There are several custom-made routines in asdoc that create clean tables from tabstat command. asdoc fully supports the command structure and options of tabstat. And, yes asdoc allows one additional statistics, that is, t-statistics alongside the allowed statistics in tabstat. For reporting purposes, asdoc categorizes tabstat commands in two groups: (1) stats without a grouping variable (2) stats over a grouping variable.

7. Flexible tables
Exporting tables from table command was the most challenging part of asdoc programming. Nevertheless, asdoc does a pretty good job in exporting table from table command. Therefore, asdoccan export one-way, two-way, three-way, and four-way tables.

8. Exporting dataset
Stata's list command displays the values of variables. asdoc can export these values to a file in form of a nicely formatted table. asdoc implements the most basic version of list command and might not accept some of its options such as mean, sum, etc. However, the [if] [in] qualifiers are accepted.

9. Exporting Stata matrix
asdoc can export a Stata's matrix to a file in form of a nicely formatted table.

10. List of unique values
To report one value per group or unique values of varlist, we can use the aslist command of asdoc

11. Export variable names and labels to a table
asdoc can be used with the Stata describe command to make a table of variable names, labels, etc.

12. Other Stata commands
Stata commands that have some output in the result window can also be used with asdoc . Even when a command does not have an output and asdoc is unintentionally added as a prefix, asdoc will just pass the command to Stata without generating any output. asdoc might come up with a less than pretty output if it is used with a Stata command that does not have a standard table format. If a user-written command that estimates regression model is used with asdoc, option isregcan be used to tell asdoc that the command is a regression command.


Acknowledgment

Professor River provided helpful suggestions on improving the display format of the correlation tables.

Since this is the first version, programming bugs are likely to exist. I shall really appreciate comments and suggestions for improving asdoc. You can reach me at [email protected]

Support website: www.FinTechProfessor.com

[Festus odingo]

Thanks Attaullah Shah,
This is such a big break through Shah. i've gone through it personally and most of my problems i earlier posted have been greatly solved.
I appreciate the good work
cheers

[Bushra Sarwar]

Thankyou Sir. This is very useful.

[Ariel Karlinsky]

Seems very useful! can an option to write to csv\excel file be added?

[Attaullah Shah]

Dear Ariel Karlinsky , right from the beginning, I planned writing the asdoc program for MS Word or RTF reader. I appreciate your comments and I have noted your suggestions. I shall definitely consider csv/Excel format in future updates of the program.

[Youshida Koki]

Dear Dr. Attaullah Shah :
Hi, I am one of the stata learners and fans. I appreciate that you develop "asdoc" program, which helps me a lot during the stata exporting process.
while I met some problems when i ran the program related to "ttest". when i execute this program, such as

asdoc ttest mpg==price, replace

. the system will remind me that "command aseploc is unrecognized" . i am wonder there is something wrong about the program, or maybe it indicates a problem with my stata version and something else.


Best wishes!

[Attaullah Shah]

The problem is that I forgot to add aseploc program in the asdoc files. In the next update, I shall add it. For time being, you can install the program from my website, type the following in Stata command window.

net install aseploc, from(http://FinTechProfessor.com)

[Xie Jinhua]

here is the method to export the results of t-test via the professor Shah's timely and friendly help.

[Roman Johnson]

How would I report post-estimation command results? I am specifically interested in reporting my output from my suest command (Baron and Kenny mediation analysis). Thank you, Dr. Shah, for this amazing program and your help. I will be sure to cite your program in my research.

[Attaullah Shah]

Here is one example to use asdoc with suest

 webuse income
regress inc edu exp if male
estimates store Male
regress inc edu exp if !male
estimates store Female
 suest Male Female

See the attached file "Myfile.doc " that is produced by asdoc.

I am not familiar with Baron and Kenny method in Stata, however, whatever command it has, you can try adding asdoc as a prefix to that command.

[Yin Qau]

Let me thank you first for this wonderful program. I have used it with many Stata commands and it successfully sends Stata output to MS Word in great-looking tables. I have one question. I want to put all nested regression tables in one word file and I try the append function and different table name function, but I can not be successful to put them into one word file. Could you give me some advices about it?

[Attaullah Shah]

I think you want to generate two nested tables, for that you can consider the reset option when using nest option in asdoc. For a more relevant answer, can you please share an example dataset and the codes that you have used for the nested regression tables.

[Changyan Peng]

Dear Professor Shah,

Thanks a million for sharing this super handy code! It is quite helpful and will definitely save a lot of time for researchers all around the world.

[Attaullah Shah]

Changyan Peng Thanks for your comments. I shall appreciate if you spread the word among your circles of researchers.

[Ariel Karlinsky]

The following code:

webuse byssin1, clear
asdoc table race sex, c(mean smokes median pop)

creates a table, yet issues the following note:

note: cellwidth too small, cannot display column heading;
to increase cellwidth, specify cellwidth(#)

Yet if I specify cellwidth(), I get the following error:

option cellwidth() not allowed