Bar graph using categorical variables

[Amanda Beatty]

Hello! I would like to make a bar figure with 10 bars. I have a categorical variable with 5 options and baseline and endline data from each respondent. I would like each set of base and end bars to be grouped together for each of the 5 options, so for example, for the response "strongly disagree" one would see red and blue bars next to each other and a legend base = blue, end = green. My original dataset was one row per repondent ID and var_base and var_end values. I reshaped it to long for easier graphing. So now my dataset has var_ with a time variable indicating base and end. I have experimented with catplot and twoway with no success. With catpolot I was able to group 5 bars for baseline and 5 bars for endline but as I mentioned I want them grouped by response category. I am attaching a picutre of the kind of figure I would like to make (that I made in Excel). Thank you!

[Andrew Musau]

Here is a way using graph bar. For your future posts, please familiarize yourself with the dataex command for presenting data examples.

help dataex

clear
input float(which category val)
1 1 1
2 1 1
1 2 6
2 2 3
1 3 17
2 3 10
1 4 52
2 4 45
1 5 23
2 5 41
end
lab values which which
lab values category cat
lab def which 1 "Base" 2 "End", modify
lab def cat 1 `""Strongly" "Disagree""' 2 "Disagree" 3 `""Neither" "disagree" "nor agree""' 4 "Agree" 5 "Strongly agree", modify

gr bar val, over(which) over(cat) asyvars blab(total) ytitle("Percent") ylab("")

[Nick Cox]

Reverting to the mention of catplot (from SSC), note the difference between

sysuse auto, clear 

catplot foreign rep78, percent(rep78) 

catplot rep78 foreign, percent(rep78)