CODEWITHSUNDEEP
datetimestata
bricevk
bricevk

Reputation: 207

Trouble obtaining quarterly values from a date variable in stata

I am starting with a date_of_survey variable that is a string formatted as YYYY-MM-DD. I then run the following commands to convert it to a date variable, and display that variable in a useful format:

gen date = date(date_of_survey, "YMD")
gen date_clean = date
format date_clean %dM_d,_CY
drop date_of_survey

That leaves me with a "date_clean" variable displayed as "September 3, 2020" and a corresponding "date" variable displayed as "22161" (equal to days since January 1, 1960).

I now need to create a variable that indicates the year and quarter of each observation, preferably in YYYY-QQ format. I assumed this shouldn't be difficult, but no matter how I have coded it, I wind up with years in the 7000s and inaccurate quarters. I must be misunderstanding how the dates are stored. My first instinct was to try a simple format date %tq command, but I'm still not getting the output I need. Any help is much appreciated. I read over the help files, and can't find the discrepancy that's causing this little problem.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1257

Answers (1)

bricevk
bricevk

Reputation: 207

ANSWER: I needed to put the date variable into quarters since January 1, 2021.  a qofd() function call before the format %tq did the trick!

Upvotes: 1

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