Introduction to Stata
1. What is Stata?
According to StataCorp (2016), Stata is “a complete, integrated statistical software package that provides everything you need for data analysis, data management, and graphics”. Basically, Stata is a software that allows you to store and manage data (large and small data sets), undertake statistical analysis on your data, and create some really nice graphs.
This software is commonly used among health researchers, particularly those working with very large data sets, because it is a powerful software that allows you to do almost anything you like with your data.
It’s important to note that Stata is not the only statistical software – there are many others that you may come across if you pursue a career that requires you to work with data. Some of the other common statistical packages include SPSS and SAS (yes, they all start with ‘s’!). The focus for this session, however, is on Stata.
Task: Open the Stata program
Open the Stata program by clicking: Start menu > All Programs > Stata 14 > StataIC 14