Providing the basic collection of statistical procedures used by social scientists, "A Gentle Introduction to Stata" presents the fundamental tools to learn Stata. The book begins with showing how to enter and manage data as well as perform basic descriptive statistics and graphical analysis. It then examines standard statistical procedures from a t-test, nonparametric tests, measures of association, multiple regression, and logical regression. The book ends with guidelines for future work and advanced topics. This learning source is an excellent introduction for those with little statistical software experience while also a useful reference for more knowledgeable statisticians by offering a detailed index of commands.

Table of Contents

PrefaceSupport Materials for the BookGETTING STARTEDIntroductionThe Stata screenUsing an existing datasetAn example of a short Stata sessionConventionsChapter summaryExercisesENTERING DATACreating a datasetAn example questionnaireDevelop a coding systemEntering dataSaving your datasetChecking the dataChapter summaryExercisesPREPARING DATA FOR ANALYSISIntroductionPlan your workCreate value labelsReverse-code variablesCreate and modify variablesCreate scalesSave some of your dataSummaryExercisesWORKING WITH COMMANDS, DO-FILES, AND RESULTSIntroductionHow Stata commands are constructedGetting the command from the menu systemSaving your resultsLogging your command fileSummaryExercisesDESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS AND GRAPHS FOR A SINGLE VARIABLEDescriptive statistics and graphsWhere is the center of a distribution?How dispersed is the distribution?Statistics and graphs-unordered categoriesStatistics and graphs-ordered categories and variablesStatistics and graphs-quantitative variablesSummaryExercisesSTATISTICS AND GRAPHS FOR TWO CATEGORICAL VARIABLESRelationship between categorical variablesCross-tabulationChi-squaredPercentages and measures of associationOrdered categorical variablesInteractive tablesTables-linking categorical and quantitative variablesSummaryExercisesTESTS FOR ONE OR TWO MEANSTests for one or two meansRandomizationHypothesesOne-sample test of a proportionTwo-sample test of a proportionOne-sample test of meansTwo-sample test of group meansRepeated-measures t testPower analysisNonparametric alternativesSummaryExercisesBIVARIATE CORRELATION AND REGRESSIONIntroduction to bivariate correlation and regressionScattergramsPlotting the regression lineCorrelationRegressionSpearman's rho: rank-order correlation for ordinal dataAlpha reliabilityKappa as a measure of agreement for categorical dataSummaryExercisesANALYSIS OF VARIANCE (ANOVA)The logic of one-way analysis of varianceANOVA exampleANOVA example using survey dataA nonparametric alternative to ANOVAAnalysis of covarianceTwo-way ANOVARepeated-measures designIntraclass correlation-measuring agreementSummaryExercisesMULTIPLE REGRESSIONIntroductionWhat is multiple regression?The basic multiple regression commandIncrement in R-squared: semipartial correlationsIs the dependent variable normally distributed?Are the residuals normally distributed?Regression diagnostic statisticsWeighted dataCategorical predictors and hierarchical regressionFundamentals of interactionSummaryExercisesLOGISTIC REGRESSIONIntroductionAn exampleWhat are an odds ratio and a logit?Data used in rest of chapterLogistic regressionHypothesis testingNested logistic regressionsSummaryExercisesWHAT'S