Gpsbound: A Command for Importing and Verifying Geographical Information from a User-provided Shapefile

Abstract

Geographical coordinates such as Global Positioning System (GPS) latitude and longitude estimates form the foundation of many spatial statistical methods. gpsbound allows users to 1) import geographical information from the attribute table of a polygon shapefile based on the identified location of GPS coordinates in a Stata dataset, and 2) check whether the GPS coordinates lie within the bounds of a polygon demarcated in the shapefile (for example, enumeration areas or primary sampling units). gpsbound also allows users to work with spatial data in Stata without the use of Geographical Information System software.