Keeping highest values of a variable per individual

[carla Oth]

Hello,

I have been struggling all day with my database, and I don't seem to find a solution to my problem. I have data that looks like this:

Person	BSc	MSc	Phd	Education_level
A	0	0	1	2
A	1	0	0	0
A	0	1	0	1
B	1	0	0	0
B	0	0	1	2

The variables BSc MSc and Phd are dummy variables. A value of 1 is assigned if the person has obtained a degree. Therefore, the database has information that person A has obtained all 3 types of degrees, whereas t he database only recognizes that person B has obtained a BSc and Phd. In some cases, people have more than 1 degree of each type, so it results in even more observations for an individual.

The last variable, Education_level is a variable I created. It assignes a value of 0 to BSc degrees, a value of 1 for MSc degrees, and a value of 2 for Phds. My goal is to end up with a single observation per Person, so that I will keep the highest value of the variable Education_level per individual. It should look like this:

Person	Education_level
A	2
B	2

How can I achieve this? Thank you so much for your help.


Best regards,

Carla

[Øyvind Snilsberg]

collapse (max) Education_level, by(Person)

[carla Oth]

Thank you, you made it so easy!