Short course
Stata
Stata is the reference tool for economists, demographers, epidemiologists and monitoring and evaluation teams. It owes this position to a quality its competitors cannot match: the written record. Everything is done through commands, so any analysis carried out in Stata can be rerun, checked and handed over.
- Duration
- 5 sessions, 18 hours
- Format
- In person or online
- Credential
- Certificate of attendance
Tuition49,000 XOF
By the end of the programme, you will be able to
- Find your way around the Stata interface and understand the logic of its commands
- Work exclusively with do-files, with a log file and an organised project
- Import data from Excel, CSV, SPSS, mobile data collection exports and online databases
- Explore, check and document a dataset: types, labels, missing values, inconsistencies
- Clean, recode, generate and transform variables without ever modifying the raw data
- Merge, append and reshape files, and check the result of each operation
- Produce descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and summaries by subgroup
- Carry out the usual statistical tests and estimate a first regression
- Take a survey design and weighting into account
- Produce tables that export directly to Word and Excel
- Build readable charts and export them at the right resolution
- Write loops and short programs to automate repetitive processing
- Organise a fully reproducible analysis project from raw file to report
Who it is for
Target audience
The course is for professionals and students who work with quantitative data and must deliver verifiable results: monitoring and evaluation officers, economists, demographers, statisticians, epidemiologists, researchers, PhD students, master's students, national statistics office staff, consultants.
Prerequisites
Three requirements:
- Hold at least a two-year post-secondary degree (BAC+2), provided the participant actually works with data
- Master basic statistical concepts: mean, percentage, cross-tabulation, the idea of a test
- Have a laptop with at least 4 GB of RAM and 5 GB of free disk space
No prior experience of Stata is required, and no programming skills are needed. Participants who already use Stata through the menus are explicitly welcome: the course aims precisely to help them make the move to do-files.
Each participant is asked to bring a dataset from their own work, which will be used for the supervised individual work in the fifth session. A practice dataset is provided for those who do not have one.
Detailed program
5 sessions · 18 h of teaching
- Stata versions, the real differences between them and which to choose for everyday use
- The interface: results, command, variables, properties and review windows
- The universal logic of a Stata command: command, variable list, condition, options
- Selection conditions and sample restrictions
- The working directory and organising a project into folders
- The do-file: why serious analysis is never done with the mouse
- The log file and keeping a record of a session
- Built-in help, documentation and installing additional commands
- Importing an Excel file, a CSV file, an SPSS dataset and a mobile data collection export
- Checking that an import has not distorted anything, a step that is always neglected
- Exercise: create your project, import your own dataset and produce your first commented do-file
- Exploring a dataset: describe, summarize, list, counts, distinct values
- Variable types, formats and converting between string and numeric
- Variable labels and value labels, the foundation of a dataset others can use
- Missing values in Stata, extended missing values and how they are handled in calculations
- Detecting duplicates, inconsistencies and impossible values
- Generating and replacing variables, with the most useful functions
- Recoding, grouping categories, creating classes and dummy variables
- String functions to clean names, codes and numbers
- Date variables and calculating durations, ages and due dates
- Statistics by group and creating aggregate variables
- Merging two files by identifier, appending observations, reshaping from wide to long format
- Systematically checking the result of a merge and interpreting the merge tracking variable
- Exercise: fully clean a real dataset, label it and save your working version
- Descriptive statistics: summaries, details, quantiles, dispersion
- Frequency tables and choosing the direction of percentages in a cross-tabulation
- Summary tables by subgroup and disaggregation by sex, age or area
- Multidimensional tables and modern tabulation commands
- Taking a survey design and weights into account, and the effect of forgetting them
- Exporting a table directly to Word and Excel, without copying by hand
- Producing publication-ready descriptive statistics tables in a single command
- Charts: histogram, box plot, bar chart, scatter plot, line chart
- Formatting options, titles, legends and graph schemes
- Charts by subgroup and combining several charts
- Exporting a chart at the right resolution for a printed report
- Exercise: produce the full descriptive chapter of a report, with exported tables and charts
- Confidence intervals for a mean and a proportion
- Tests comparing means, for independent and paired samples
- The chi-square test, Fisher's exact test and measures of association
- The usual non-parametric tests
- Correlation and reading it with caution
- Simple and multiple linear regression: estimation, reading the output, residuals
- Logistic regression and reading odds ratios
- Storing, comparing and exporting several models in a single table
- Local and global macros, so you never write the same variable list twice
- Loops over variables, values and files
- Writing a short program and a reusable command
- Structuring a reproducible project: master file, processing files, output folders
- Exercise: automate the production of fifteen tables with a loop and a master file
- Each participant works on their own dataset and their own analysis question
- Diagnosis of the dataset brought and correction of structural problems
- Building the complete do-file, from raw data to results
- Choosing and checking the methods used, with the trainer's support
- Producing the tables and charts for the participant's report
- Review of the code, comments and reproducibility of the project
- Presentation of attestations
Assessment and certification
The Stata training attestation is issued to participants who have attended the four group sessions and completed the supervised individual work in the fifth session. It states the title, the 18-hour duration, the dates, the modules followed and the nature of the work completed, and carries a unique number with a verification code.
Participants also receive:
- The complete course material in PDF, session by session
- All the do-files seen in class, commented line by line
- A reproducible template project, with a master file and folder structure
- The practice datasets and their codebooks
- A quick reference of Stata commands grouped by use
- A table of equivalent commands in Stata, SPSS and R
- A checklist for cleaning and documenting a dataset
Upcoming sessions
Next dates being prepared
Leave your email: we will let you know as soon as registration opens.
Frequently asked questions
49,000 XOF per participant. Training for a team or an organisation is quoted on request.
5 sessions, 18 hours.
Yes: you can attend onsite or online, as you prefer.
Three requirements: hold at least a two-year post-secondary degree (BAC+2), provided the participant actually works with data ; master basic statistical concepts: mean, percentage, cross-tabulation, the idea of a test ; have a laptop with at least 4 GB of RAM and 5 GB of free disk space ; no prior experience of Stata is required, and no programming skills are needed. Participants who already use Stata through the menus are explicitly welcome: the course aims precisely to help them make the move to do-files. ; each participant is asked to bring a dataset from their own work, which will be used for the supervised individual work in the fifth session. A practice dataset is provided for those…
A certificate of attendance is issued at the end of the course.
Fill in the online enrolment request: no payment is taken on the site. The firm reviews your application, then contacts you to confirm your place and the payment terms. No session is scheduled yet: leave your email on this page to be told when registration opens.
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