Trying to create a Unique Identifier for a Survey Data. (Have tried following other posts but nothing has worked)

[Ali Burke]

Hello,
I hope this post finds you well !
The version of STATA being used is 14.2

The following is a glimpse of the data i am dealing with. In reality, there are much more variable

Region	Hospital_number	age
1	1	18
1	1	25
1	2	30
1	2	45
1	2	34
1	2	50
2	3	missing
2	3	missing
2	4	missing

Only the data on region and hospital number is complete for all the patients in the survey.

I want to generate a variable which gives numeric id to each patient within the hospital of a each region. From the data i know that in region 1, and hospital 1, there are 2 patients, and at hospital number 2, there are 4 patients.
When running the command egen patient_id=group(Hospital_number Region), the new variables basically displays the same data as Hospital_number.
I would be most obliged if anyone can help.

Kind Regards

[William Lisowski]

Welcome to Statalist.

I think the following will start you in a useful direction.

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input byte(region hospital_number age)
1 1 18
1 1 25
1 2 30
1 2 45
1 2 34
1 2 50
2 3  .
2 3  .
2 4  .
end

sort region hospital_number age
by region hospital_number: generate patient_id = _n
list, noobs sepby(region hospital_number) abbreviate(20)

. list, noobs sepby(region hospital_number) abbreviate(20)

  +---------------------------------------------+
  | region   hospital_number   age   patient_id |
  |---------------------------------------------|
  |      1                 1    18            1 |
  |      1                 1    25            2 |
  |---------------------------------------------|
  |      1                 2    30            1 |
  |      1                 2    34            2 |
  |      1                 2    45            3 |
  |      1                 2    50            4 |
  |---------------------------------------------|
  |      2                 3     .            1 |
  |      2                 3     .            2 |
  |---------------------------------------------|
  |      2                 4     .            1 |
  +---------------------------------------------+

[Ali Burke]

Sir Williams,

I cannot thank you enough. It was so simple.

For some reason, i find it really complex to do simple things on stata. But i will learn !

Kind Regards,