Introduction to Stata
This course aims to introduce the statistical software package Stata, including its use for data management and data exploration.
| Dates | 29 November - 1 December 2023 |
|---|---|
| Fee | £660 |
| Format | Online |
| Audience | Open to all applicants (prerequisites apply) |
Course profile
This course will give an overview of basic Stata syntax to enable the user to manage and manipulate data and produce summary statistics and graphs.
Please click on the sections below for more information.
Structure
This course will be delivered online over 3 consecutive days, mornings and afternoons.
Intended Learning Objectives
By the end of the course participants should be able to:
1. find help about a given topic or command;
2. explore a dataset in a number of ways;
3. add labels to a dataset to make it self-documenting;
4. recode variables and derive new variables from existing ones;
5. reorganize and simplify a dataset and deal with missing values;
6. input data from a variety of sources;
7. combine two or more datasets;
8. produce summary statistics, tables and graphs;
9. keep a record of their work and ensure it is reproducible; and
10. deal with dates (optional).
Target audience
This course is intended for people who are just starting off managing data and conducting simple descriptive statistics in Stata.
Outline
This course will cover:
1. getting started with Stata (loading and saving files, finding help, etc.);
2. listing, describing and summarising data;
3. naming and labelling variables;
4. subsetting data;
5. generating and replacing variables;
6. creating tables;
7. importing data from other programs and merging datasets;
8. logs and Do files to document output and code;
9. creating graphs; and
10. working with dates (optional).
Teaching staff
The course leads, Dr Daniel Smith and Dr Beverly Shirkey, have extensive experience using Stata (>5 years each), and use Stata regularly for data processing and analysis as part of their research within Bristol Medical School.
All course tutors will come from Bristol Medical School and be familiar with Stata.
Prerequisites
To make sure the course is suitable for you and you will benefit from attending, please ensure you meet the following prerequisites before booking:
| Software |
You must have Stata (version 14 or later)* installed in advance of the course. Please note that older versions may be OK, but you should recognise that older versions may have slightly different functionalities. *Internal University of Bristol participants are given access to Stata. Go to Stata Installation Instructions (internal only) for help setting it up before the start of the course. External participants are responsible for providing their own access to Stata, however if you are an employee of a university or another institution you may be able to get a short term free Evaluate license. If you are a student, Stata offer a short term free Student licence (one week). |
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| Recommendation |
A copy of the course manual will be emailed to you in advance of the course. To facilitate practical sessions we recommend that you either print the course manual yourself, have it open on another device (like a tablet or phone), or split your screen between the manual, your own version of Stata and the Stata the tutor is sharing in Blackboard. If available, a second screen would be ideal for splitting your screen between these different programs. |
Bookings
Before booking this course, please make sure you read the information provided above about the target audience and prerequisites. It is important that you have access to the relevant IT resources needed for the course and meet the knowledge prerequisites to ensure you can get the most from the course.
Bookings are taken via our online booking system, for which you must register an account. To check if you are eligible for free or discounted courses please see our fees and voucher packs page. All bookings are subject to our terms & conditions, which can be read in full here.
For help and support with booking a course refer to our booking information page, FAQs or feel free to contact us directly. For available payment options please see: How to pay your short course fees.
Course materials
Participants are granted access to our virtual learning platform (Blackboard) approximately 1 week in advance of the course. This allows time for any pre-course work to be completed and to familiarise with the platform.
To gain the most from the course, we recommend that you attend in full and participate in all interactive components. We endeavour to record all live lecture sessions and upload these to the online learning environment within 24 hours. This allows course participants to review these sessions at leisure and revisit them multiple times. Please note that we do not record breakout sessions.
All course participants retain access to the online learning materials and recordings for 3 months after the course.
University of Bristol staff and postgraduate students who do not wish to attend the full course may instead register for access to the 'Materials & Recordings' version of this course: Further information and bookings.
Testimonials
95% of attendees recommend this course*.
*Attendee feedback from 2022-2023.
Here is a sample of feedback from the last run of the course:
"Very useful introductory course. Really liked the stepwise process. Useful handbook. Short bursts of sessions with lots of breaks was great".
Course feedback, November 2022
"This whole course was a great introduction. In particular creating dofiles made it really easy to understand the running of code and the application of stata in the long run".
Course feedback, November 2022
"I've learned a lot of useful commands which I will be able to use in my work and feel a lot more comfortable using STATA".
Course feedback, November 2022
"Good basic introduction to stata, I will use it to guide my own learning now to consolidate this knowledge".
Course feedback, November 2022
"I now feel I am prepared to start tackling my dataset with a systematic approach - exactly what I wanted from the course".
Course feedback, November 2022
"Facilitators were experienced and responsive to questions".
Course feedback, November 2022
"Excellent tutors and learning materials. The practical format of the sessions really aided learning".
Course feedback, November 2022
"Systematically went through all of the important topics related to STATA. I enjoyed the practical exercises and how these tested skills we had learned in previous sessions, as well as skills we had just learned. The teachers were enthusiastic and happy to help/answer queries".
Course feedback, November 2022
"All the tutors were knowledgeable and sessions were structured and well-run. Doing the exercises as part of each session was really useful".
Course feedback, November 2022
Course bookings
Bookings for this course will open at midday on 17th October 2023.
From midday on 19th September 2023 you may visit the booking system to preregister an account.
Systematically went through all of the important topics related to STATA. I enjoyed the practical exercises and how these tested skills we had learned in previous sessions, as well as skills we had just learned. The teachers were enthusiastic and happy to help/answer queries.
Dates don't work? Just need a refresher?
Find out about the self-paced Materials & Recordings version of this course [UoB only].