Stata: A Really Short Introduction

Description

Stata is one of the most popular statistical software in the world and suited for all kinds of users, from absolute beginners to experienced veterans. This book offers a clear and concise introduction to the usage and the workflow of Stata. Included topics are importing and managing datasets, cleaning and preparing data, creating and manipulating variables, producing descriptive statistics and meaningful graphs as well as central quantitative methods, like linear (OLS) and binary logistic regressions and matching. Additional information about diagnostical tests ensures that these methods yield valid and correct results that live up to academic standards. Furthermore, users are instructed how to export results that can be directly used in popular software like Microsoft Word for seminar papers and publications. Lastly, the book offers a short yet focussed introduction to scientific writing, which should guide readers through the process of writing a first quantitative seminar paper or research report. The book underlines correct usage of the software and a productive workflow which also introduces aspects like replicability and general standards for academic writing. While absolute beginners will enjoy the easy to follow point-and-click interface, more experienced users will benefit from the information about do-files and syntax which makes Stata so popular. Lastly, a wide range of user-contributed software (Ados"") is introduced which further improves the general workflow and guarantees the availability of state of the art statistical methods. Title Page Copyright Contents List of Notes 1 Introduction 1.1 Formatting 1.2 Graphic style 1.3 Version info 1.4 Online resources 1.5 Cheat sheet 2 The first steps 2.1 The graphical user interface (GUI) 2.2 Opening stata files 2.3 Importing non-Stata file formats 2.4 Entering data manually 2.5 Using preinstalled data 2.6 Saving and exporting data 2.7 The basic workflow 2.8 Do-files 2.9 Delimit and line breaks* 3 Cleaning and preparing data 3.1 Getting to know your data 3.2 Variable names and labels 3.3 Labeling values 3.4 IDs and unique identifiers 3.5 Missing values 3.6 Creating new variables 3.6.1 Special functions 3.7 The if qualifier 3.8 Changing and replacing variables 3.9 Removing observations and variables 3.10 Cleaning data systematically 3.11 Combining datasets* 3.11.1 Appending datasets 3.11.2 One-to-One Merge 3.11.3 Many-to-One Merge 3.11.4 One-to-Many Merge 3.11.5 All pairwise combinations 3.12 Reshaping data* 4 Describing data 4.1 Summarizing information 4.2 Using stored results* 4.3 Histograms 4.4 Boxplots 4.5 Simple bar charts 4.6 Scatterplots 4.7 Frequency tables 4.8 Summarizing information by categories 4.9 Editing and exporting graphs 4.9.1 Combining graphs 4.10 Correlations 4.11 Testing for normality 4.12 t-test for groups* 4.13 Weighting* 5 Introduction to causal analysis 5.1 Correlation and causation 5.2 Causal graphs 5.3 Estimating causal effects 5.4 What does “controlling” actually mean?* 6 Regression analysis 6.1 Research question 6.2 What is a regression? 6.3 Binary independent variable 6.4 Ordinal independent variable 6.5 Metric independent variable 6.6 Interaction effects* 6.6.1 The classic way 6.6.2 Marginal effects 6.6.3 Predicted values 6.6.4 Separate analyses by subgroups 6.7 Standardized regression coefficients* 7 Regression diagnostics 7.1 Exogeneity 7.2 Random sampling 7.3 Linearity in parameters 7.3.1 Solutions 7.4 Multicollinearity 7.4.1 Solutions 7.5 Heteroscedasticity 7.5.1 Solutions 7.6 Influential observations 7.6.1 Dfbetas 7.6.2 Cook’s distance 7.7 Summary 8 Logistic regression* 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Control variables 8.3 Nested Models 8.4 Diagnostics 8.4.1 Model misspecification 8.4.2 Sample size and empty cells 8.4.3 Multicollinearity 8.4.4 Influential observations 9 Matching 9.1 Simulating an experiment 9.2 Propensity score matching 9.3 Matching diagnostics 9.3.1 Common support 9.3.2 Balancing of covariates 10 Reporting results 10.1 Tables 10.2 Graphs 11 Writing a seminar paper 11.1 The basic structure 11.2 Master do-files 12 The next steps 12.1 Online sources and manuals 12.2 Books References Copyright Index