COURSE OVERVIEW

 

“Migrating to Stata Painlessly!” is a reduced version of our “Up and Running in Stata” course. The course covers everything from the very basics, in order to get one up and running in Stata, through to an overview of the Stata commands available for preliminary data analysis, data management, importing and exporting data formats and the creation of graphs in Stata.

In contrast to our Up and Running in Stata course however, it does not include specific applied Lab based exercises at the end of each individual session. Despite this, participants are able to replicate in real time the commands being illustrated by the course leader using the data bases provided at the beginning of the course.

 

TARGET AUDIENCE

 

This course has been specifically designed for researchers wishing to migrate to Stata from other statistical packages or simply needing to refresh their existing Stata skills. Experience has shown us that individuals without any previous experience of other statistical software packages are likely to find the course somewhat too intensive and would benefit far more from attending our Up and Running in Stata, which offers an applied exercise component at the end of each session during which participants have the opportunity to implement the concepts/techniques discussed in the sessions under the watchful eye of the course tutor.

 

COURSE REQUISITES

 

Working knowledge of other statistical software packages such as R, SPSS o SAS, together with Familiarity with PCs and a working knowledge of English is also required.

 

PROGRAM


SESSION I: INTRODUCTION – GETTING STARTE

 

Stata’s GUI
File types in Stata
Working interactively in Stata
Saving output: the log file
Interrupting Stata
Loading Stata databases
The Log Output File
Saving databases in Stata
Exiting the software

 

SESSION II: PRELIMINARY DATA ANALYSIS

 

A preliminary look at the data: describe, summarize commands
Abbreviations in Stata
Stata’s syntax
Summary statistics
Statistical Tables: table, tabstat and tabulate commands

 

SESSION III: DATA MANAGEMENT

 

Renaming variables
Selecting or eliminating variables
The count command
sort command
Creating sub-groups: the prefix by
Creating new variables: generate
Operators in Stata
The command assert
Missing values in Stata
Modifying variables: replace, recode
Creating Labels: variable labels and value labels
Creating dummy variables

 

SESSION IV: IMPORTING DATA FROM SPREADSHEETS

 

Import Excel and Export Excel commands
The insheet and outsheet commands
Reading in Text Data Files
Issues to watch out for when importing data

Missing values
String variables
Date variables

 

Redefining missing values
destring command
tostring command
dealing wih “messy” strings

 

SESSION V: GRAPHICS – A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

 

Stata’s syntax for two way graphs
Saving and exporting graphs
Useful graph commands
Personalizing a graph
Stata’s Graph Editor

 

APPENDIX A

 

Merging data bases
do files

 

APPENDIX B: MORE ADVANCED ISSUES (time permitting)

 

do files
Merging data bases
e-class and r-class variables
collapse command
preserve command
restore command

 

USEFUL TEXTS

 

A Gentle Introduction to Stata, 6th Ed., Alan Acock (2018) Stata Press

Data Analysis Using Stata, 3rd Ed., Ulrich Kohler, Frauke Kreuter (2012) Stata Press

Data Management Using Stata: A Practical Handbook, 2nd Ed., Michael N. Mitchell, (2020) Stata Press

The Workflow of Data Analysis Using Stata, J. Scott Long (2009) Stata Press