Confidence intervals for proportions

Written by:

Ylva B Almquist

Introduction

Confidence intervals for counts can be calculated for categorical variables.

Function

Basic command

proportion varlist

Useful options

proportion varlist, level(#)

Explanations
`varlist`	Insert the name(s) of the variable(s) that you want to use.
`level(#)`	Specify the confidence level. Default is 95.

More information
help proportion

Practical example

Dataset

StataData1.dta

Variable name	educ
Variable label	Educational level (Age 40, Year 2010)
Value labels	1=Compulsory 2=Upper secondary 3=University

proportion educ

Here, we get the proportions (which can be translated into percentages) and the 95% confidence interval for the three categories of educ.

In this example, 19.2% have compulsory education (95% CI: 18.4-20.0), 44.2% have upper secondary education (95% CI: 43.2-45.3%), and 36.6% have university education (95% CI: 35.6-37.6%).