data reshaping

In this post, we demonstrate how to convert datasets between wide form and long form. This is also known as "reshaping data". Reshaping is often needed when you work with datasets that contain variables with some kinds of sequences, say, time-series data. It is fairly easy to transform data between wide and long forms in Stata using the reshape command, however you'll want to be careful when you do so to eliminate possible mistakes in the process of transforming. First, let's see how the wide and long forms look.

When performing data analysis, we often need to "reshape" our data from wide format to long format. A common example of wide data is a data structure with one record per subject and multiple columns for repeated measures. For example: