*! version 1.11 31 May 2021
help for infoqueryversion 1.11 (31 May 2021)

Title

infoquery -- query information attached to variables

Syntax

infoquery varlist [, alllanguages charlist(string) IDs]

Description

infoquery fetches information saved in characteristics of any variable (using the command char define varname[charname] "text") in varlist and prints them to standard output.

In the NEPS datasets, question texts and instrument variable names are saved as variable characteristics, both in german as well as in english language (where applicable). This program makes it easy to access this information,
but may also be used for other purposes.

varlist is the main parameter interpreted. Characteristics for every variable in varlist will be processed. Wildcards and variable abbreviation are supported.

If option alllanguages is specified, information will be queried and displayed not only in the active dataset language, but in all languages saved in the dataset (see label language).

By default, characteristics ending on the string "id" are not displayed. If option ids is specified, these contents are also reported.

charlist(string) can be used to specify a list of characteristics to be displayed; this option may be useful when applying infoquery to other datasets than NEPS SUFs.
If omitted, string defaults to usual NEPS values (i.e. NEPS_instname NEPS_sufname NEPS_varlabel_\`lang' NEPS_questiontext_\`lang' NEPS_variablequestion_\`lang' and some more,
with `lang' being an unexpanded macro representing the active dataset language).

Remarks

This command is part of the NEPStools bundle, written to assist with the NEPS dataset files.

As of version 1.11 or newer, infoquery is based on the EMD (extended metadata) framework. The framework documentation, and corresponding user commands, can be downloaded from SSC with the package //fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/e")"':from SSC.

The source code of the program is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. The corresponding license text can be found on the internet at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ or in gnugpl.

Examples

Query information for variables t514001_w1 and t514002_w1 in doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC4:1.1.0:

. use "SC4_xTarget_D_1-1-0.dta"

. label language en

. infoquery t514001_w1 t514002_w1

Author

Daniel Bela (daniel.bela@lifbi.de), Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Germany.

Also see

Help: NEPStools, char, label language, help EMD (if installed from SSC)