Hi Everyone,

I'm quite new to Stata (version 17.0) and I'm having some trouble implementing a loop for some basic calculations.

I have variables spanning from 1952-2021 for 143 countries, measured quarterly (i.e. 4 variables for each year). They are currently named in the general format "WUI_1952q1", "WUI_1952q2", "WUI_1952q3", "WUI_1952q4".. etc., for each year, with q1-q4 representing the quarters. Example:
Array



I would like to create variables that are the average of the 4 quarterly variables for each year. I tried creating a loop (only for 4 years to begin with):

Code:
local years 1952 1953 1954 1955
foreach i of local years {
    mean WUI_'i'q1 WUI_'i'q2 WUI_'i'q3 WUI_q4
}
However, I keep on getting the error code "WUI_ ambigious abbreviation". I tried looking up this error code but I am still not managing. How can I create this loop?
Thank you in advance!