This is a question/comment for the folk at EpiData.
Much of the data here is entered in EpiData and then analysed in Stata. I've noticed that in Stata the display format for a field is the same as the data entry format in EpiData. For example if the field "smoke" (0=no, 1=yes) has the field type set to # in EpiData, in Stata the display format is %1.0f. This can cause confusion with Stata commands that base the display format of their output on the display format of the field, e.g. the Stata command "ci". If I type the following into Stata: ci smoke, binomial The output I get looks like this: Variable | Obs Mean Std. Err. [95% Conf. Interval] -------------+--------------------------------------------------------------- sex | 44 0 0 0 0 because the mean, SE, and CI have been rounded to the nearest integer.
Is it necessary for the output/exported format of fields to be the same as the data entry format? Can numeric fields be exported with a format of at least 9.0g?
Cheers, Suzanna
Suzanna Vidmar Research Fellow
Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit Royal Children's Hospital Flemington Rd Parkville Victoria 3052
telephone: +61 3 9345 6372 facsimile: +61 3 9345 6000