desctable help file

The installed help file, rendered for the web

This page is generated from desctable.sthlp by build.do, so it matches the installed version. In Stata, type help desctable.

Title

desctable – Tables of Descriptive Statistics - with Unique Treatment of Continuous, Binary, and Nominal Variables

General syntax

desctable varlist ifin , filename( ) options

Overview

desctable produces a descriptive (summary) statistics table. desctable treats continuous, binary, and nominal variables differently – providing statistics and labeled output most appropriate for the measurement level of the variable.

Factor syntax is required: binary and nominal variables must be entered into the variable list with the i. prefix. Variables without any prefix are assumed to be continuous.

desctable outputs the descriptive statistics table to Excel; it can easily be copied to Word without losing the formatting of the table.

desctable labels the rows of the table with the corresponding variable label. Categories of nominal variables are labeled with the value labels of the corresponding variable. Thus, the effectiveness of the default table depends on the effectivness of the labels in the data (see label for details on adding variable and value labels to your data).

Options

Required Option

Option	Description
`filename(string)`	is required. This names the Excel sheet that is saved with the descriptive statistics table. If the filename includes spaces, it must be enclosed in quotations; e.g. filename(“file name has spaces”)

Optional statistics to include in the table

Stat Name Description

Option Description

stats(string) specifies which statistics should be included in the table. Each statistic is reported in a separate column of the table. The default is stat(mean sd) which reports the mean [proportion for binary and nominal variables] and the standard deviation of continuous variables. Statistics can be requested in any order desired; columns of the table will be ordered based on the list specified in stats( ). The following statistics are available:

Option	Description
`stats(string)`	specifies which statistics should be included in the table. Each statistic is reported in a separate column of the table. The default is stat(mean sd) which reports the mean [proportion for binary and nominal variables] and the standard deviation of continuous variables. Statistics can be requested in any order desired; columns of the table will be ordered based on the list specified in stats( ). The following statistics are available:

mean Mean of continuous variables; proportion of binary/nominal variables.

sd Standard deviation (c).

freq Freqency for each category of a nominal variable.

n Number of non-missing observations for a variable.

variance Variance (c).

median Median (c).

min Minimum (c).

max Maximum (c).

range Range [max - min] (c).

iqr Interquartile range [75th percentile - 25th percentile] (c).

cv Coefficient of variation [sd/mean] (c).

semean Standard error of mean (c).

skewness Skewness (c).

kurtosis Kurtosis (c).

p1 1st percentile (c).

p5 5th percentile (c).

p10 10th percentile (c).

p25 25th percentile (c).

p50 50th percentile [same as median] (c).

p75 75th percentile (c).

p90 90th percentile (c).

p95 95th percentile (c).

p99 99th percentile (c).

svymean *Survey weighted estimate of mean; proportion of binary/nominal variables.

svysemean *Survey weighted estimate of standard error of mean (c).

mimean *Multiple imputation estimate of mean; proportion of binary/nominal variables.

misemean *Multiple imputation estimate of standard error of mean (c).

misvymean *Survey weighted multiple imputation estimate of mean; proportion of binary/nominal variables.

misvysemean *Survey weighted multiple imputation estimate of standard error of mean (c).

indicates this statistic is only reported for continuous variables. * svy statistics are only available if data has been svyset. mi statistics are only available if data has been mi set. misvy statistics are only available if data has been mi svyset.

Other options

Option	Description
`decimals(#)`	changes the number of decimal places reported for the statistics. The default is 2. Any integer between 0 - 5 is allowed.
`listwise`	performs listwise deletion across all specified variables. That is, observations with missing data on any of the variables included in the table are excluded from any of the reported statistics. The default is casewise deletion which includes observations that are non-missing for each specific statistic.
`notes(string)`	adds footnotes to the bottom of the table. The notes are automatically wrapped so they do not exceed the width of the table. For long lists of notes, you will need to adjust the height of the cell in Excel after the table is made for all of the notes to be visible. Notes must be enclosed in quotation marks, e.g. notes(“This is a footnote”). For long lists of notes you can list the notes on multiple lines in the code, as long as each line is enclosed in quotations, e.g. notes(“This is the first footnote” “This is the second footnote”). The appearance of the notes will be unaffected.
`title(string)`	adds a title to the table. The default is to title the table “Table #: Descriptive Statistics (N = ##)” where the N size is calculated automatically based on the total number of observations that descriptive statistics were calculated for.
`font(string)`	changes the font of all numbers, labels, notes, and titles in the table. The default is “Times New Roman”
`fontsize(#)`	changes the font size of all numbers, labels, and titles in the table. The default is 11.
`notesize(#)`	changes the font size of the footnotes on the table. The default is 9.
`txtindent(#)`	changes how far the statistics are indented from the right edge of the column. All statistics are right-justified so that the statistics align on the decimal point. The default is 1.
`singleborder`	changes to a single horizontal line as the border on the top and bottom of the table. The default is to use double horizontal lines as the table top and bottom borders.
`sheetname(string)`	adds a name to the individual Excel sheet where the table is saved. The default is to name the sheet “Descriptives Table”
`varnames`	labels the rows of the table with the variable names rather than the variable labels. The default is to use the variable’s label if it exists.

Group options

Option	Description
`group(groupvar)`	specifies that descriptive statistics should be calculated separately for each group of the nominal grouping variable. Statistics for each group are added to the right of the tables. Labels for the new columns are automatically generated from the value labels of the grouping variable.

Examples

sysuse nlsw88
desctable wage age i.race i.union i.collgrad tenure i.occupation hours, filename("descriptivesEX1")
desctable wage age i.race i.union i.collgrad tenure i.occupation hours, filename("descriptivesEX2") stats(mean freq sd min max iqr median)
desctable wage age i.race i.union i.collgrad tenure i.occupation hours, filename("descriptivesEX3") font("Helvetica") fontsize(13)
desctable wage age i.race i.union i.collgrad tenure i.occupation hours, filename("descriptivesEX4") decimals(3)
desctable wage age i.union i.collgrad tenure i.occupation hours, filename("descriptivesEX5") group(race)
desctable wage age i.race i.union i.collgrad tenure i.occupation hours, ///
filename("descriptivesEX6") ///
notes("This is the first footnote." ///
"This is how to split long footnotes" ///
"onto multiple lines of the code.")

Comments

desctable makes the descriptive statistics table using Stata’s putexcel command. Because of some of the putexcel features used, Stata version 14.1 or newer is required to use desctable.

Available statistics for continuous variables are those that can be calculated with tabstat (with the exception of q - which is not allowed with desctable). See tabstat for more details.

Authorship

desctable is written by Trenton D Mize (Department of Sociology, Purdue University) and Bianca Manago (Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University). Questions can be sent to tmize@purdue.edu