Stata allows the labeling of variables and also the individual values of categorical or ordinal variable values. For example, in the –sysuse auto– database, “foreign” is labeled as “Car origin”, 0 is “Domestic”, and 1 is “Foreign”. It isn’t terribly intuitive to extract the variable label of foreign (here, “Car origin”) or the labels from the categorical values (here, “Domestic” and “Foreign”).

Here’s a script that you might find helpful to extract these labels and save them as macros that can later be called back. This example generates a second string variable that applies those labels. I use this sort of code to automate the labeling of figures with the value labels, but this is a pretty simple example for now.

Remember to run the entire script from top to bottom or else Stata might drop your macros. Good luck!

sysuse auto, clear
// Note: saving variable label details at 
//       --help macro--, under "Macro functions 
//       for extracting data attributes"
// 
// 1. Extract the label for the variable itself.
//    If we look at the --codebook-- for the 
//    variable "foreign", we see...
//
codebook foreign
//
//    ...that the label for "foreign" is "Car 
//    origin" (see it in the top right of 
//    the output).  Here's how we grab the 
//    label of "foreign", save it as a macro, 
//    and print it.
//
local foreign_lab: variable label foreign
di "`foreign_lab'"
//
// 2. Extract the label for the values of the variable.
//    If we look at --codebook-- again for "foreign", 
//    we see...
//
codebook foreign
// 
//    ...that 0 is "Domestic" and 1 is "Foreign". 
//    Here's how to grab those labels, save macros, 
//    and print them
//
local foreign_vallab_0: label (foreign) 0 
local foreign_vallab_1: label (foreign) 1 
di "The label of `foreign_lab' 0 is `foreign_vallab_0' and 1 is `foreign_vallab_1'"
//
// 3. Now you can make a variable for the value labels.
//  
gen strL foreign_vallab = "" // this makes a string 
replace foreign_vallab="`foreign_vallab_0'" if foreign==0
replace foreign_vallab="`foreign_vallab_1'" if foreign==1
// 
// 4. You can also label this new string variable 
//    using the label from #1
// 
label variable foreign_vallab "`foreign_lab' as string"
// 
// BONUS: You can automate this with a loop, using 
//    --levelsof-- to extract options for each 
//    categorical variable. There is only one 
//    labeled categorical variable in this dataset 
//    (foreign) so this loop only uses the single one. 
// 
sysuse auto, clear
foreach x in foreign {
	local `x'_lab: variable label `x' // #1 from above
	gen strL `x'_vallab = "" // start of #3
	label variable `x'_vallab "``x'_lab' string"
	levelsof `x', local(valrange)
	foreach n of numlist `valrange' { 
		local `x'_vallab_`n': label (`x') `n' // #2 from above
		replace `x'_vallab = "``x'_vallab_`n''" if `x' == `n' // end of #3
	}
}