Reversing scale in variable

[Niels Telman]

In our stata data set we have a variable confidence scale from 1 to 4, where 1 is most confident and 4 is least confindent. However, we want to reverse this so 1 is the least confident and 4 is the most confident. Does anyone know if this is possible and how to do it? Thanks!

[Nick Cox]

replace v = 5 - v 

takes care of the arithmetic but the more difficult issue is reversing any value labels (and variable label or notes if there are mentions of details you want to change). A quick

search reverse 

yields some plausible hits, with apologies if I missed some.


dm7 from http://www.stata.com/stb/stb7
STB-7 dm7. Utility to reverse variable coding. / STB insert by Prof. Marc
Jacobs, Dept of Sociology, / University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. /
Support: Fax: 011-31-30 53 4405 / After installation, see help omscore.

label_reverse from http://www.stata.com/users/brising
label_reverse: Reverses value labels for poorly ordered ordinal variables
/ Bill Rising / Dept. of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics / University of
Louisville / email: brisinglouisville.edu

rev from http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/r
'REV': module to reverse value order of variables / rev reverses the value
order of each variable specified in / varlist. The created variable
rv_varname contains the values of / the original variable in reversed
order. Value labels are / reversed accordingly. / KW: data management /

revrs from http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/r
'REVRS': module to reverse variable value order / This is a module to
reverse the order of a variable's values and / maintain specified value
labels. `revrs' is especially helpful / for quickly recoding multiple
categorical or ordinal response / variables to follow a similar direction.

revv from http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/r
'REVV': module to reverse value order of variables / revv reverses the
order of values of each variable specified / in varlist. New variables are
created containing the reversed / value order of the original variables.
In a second step the / value labels are reversed accordingly. / KW: data

vreverse from http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/v
'VREVERSE': module to reverse existing categorical variable / vreverse
generates a new variable as a reversed copy of an / existing categorical
variable with integer values. Suppose that / in the observations
specified values vary between minimum min / and maximum max. Then values

The last -- vreverse (SSC) -- happens to be the most familiar to me, so how does it work?

. sysuse auto, clear
(1978 Automobile Data)

. label def rep78 1 Abysmal 2 Awful 3 Adequate 4 Admirable 5 Amazing

. label val rep78 rep78

. tab rep78

     Repair |
Record 1978 |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
    Abysmal |          2        2.90        2.90
      Awful |          8       11.59       14.49
   Adequate |         30       43.48       57.97
  Admirable |         18       26.09       84.06
    Amazing |         11       15.94      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |         69      100.00

. vreverse rep78, gen(rep78_2)

. tab rep78_2

     Repair |
Record 1978 |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
    Amazing |         11       15.94       15.94
  Admirable |         18       26.09       42.03
   Adequate |         30       43.48       85.51
      Awful |          8       11.59       97.10
    Abysmal |          2        2.90      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |         69      100.00