I'm working on my master thesis and I think I need some expert advice here
what I need to do is basically match two data files.
from what I understand normally you need to have either exactly the same variables or exactly the same cases to merge files. unluckily this is not my case.
the databases are from two years (2006 and 2007), contain different variables and share *some* of the cases. this is because some of the firms to which the questionnaire was sent replied both years, but some only replied either in 2006 or in 2007.
I now need to merge the data from the two years in order to observe what happened in 2007 to a certain firm who had certain values in its 2006 variables.
the problem is that the cases from year 2006 and 2007 only ovelap for about 1/3.
is there any way to merge the files?
I would love to hear your ideas