Elementary Data Analysis with STATA, 2010 October - December Professors Fabrizzio Bernardi and Mark Franklin

Register for the class with Amy.Chamberlaine@EUI.eu (ext 2432).

The aim of this seminar is to give researchers in sociology and political sciences practical knowledge of the application of basic quantitative techniques, which are commonly used in sociology and political sciences, while using one of the major statistical software packages STATA. This introductory course is open to all researchers from all departments, whatever their level of experience with quantitative techniques and STATA.

The software of STATA is available for all EUI researchers and STATA is also installed in the PC in the Badia. (N.B. If you do not have your own STATA software, you may wish to ask for a side licence from the Badia Computing Service Site Office, by email to BF-Site@eui.eu stating also whether this is for Windows or MAC platform).

This seminar has an introductory nature because these techniques should have been taught at a pre-graduate level. Given the diverse methodological backgrounds of the EUI researchers and the different academic cultures within the European universities, such an introductory seminar is necessary for those who want to follow the advanced quantitative seminar The application of advanced quantitative techniques with STATA, given in the second term of each academic year.

The best way to learn the quantitative techniques is to apply them on your own data to answer your own research-questions. Participants are encouraged to bring their own data with them to use them in the seminar for their exercises (not necessarily the data one will use in his/her thesis). Researchers without applicable data for these exercises can use data from the European Social Survey (see for more information: http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ ).

The main activities of this seminar will be the application by the researchers of the various basic univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis techniques to either the European Social Survey data or their own data. Normally, one session will be devoted to the explanation of these techniques, while on the next session exercises with these techniques will be discussed. The most important part of the seminar is not attending the two-hour sessions, but making the exercises. Making all exercises is the condition for certification of sufficient attendance. Those who have a laptop are strongly advised to take it to the seminar, in order to understand better the exercises and the STATA possibilities.

For the STATA we use ‘A Stata Companion to Political Analysis’ by Philip H., III Pollock (Paperback) CQ Press Washington DC, 2006. As theory-based data analysis books, we use Carol S. Aneshesel’s 'Theory-based data analysis for the social sciences'. The EUI library has a number of copies of these books on the seminar shelf. 

There is an useful  website from UCLA where manuals and annotated output are available for many different statistical models. The explanations are very clear and they take you through the output that STATA provides. http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/dae/

The most important part of the course is not attending the two-hour sessions, but making the exercises. These exercises have to be sent in 24 hours before each session (thus before Thursday 11.00 AM) to the mail-address of prof. Bernardi (fabrizio.bernardi@eui.eu) and prof. Franklin (mark.franklin@eui.eu). Exercises, which arrived in time, are given back at the start of each meeting with answers, remarks, etc. A successful completion of the course will be judged on the basis of quality of the sent-in exercises.

The seminar meets for two hours each week.  Precise information about dates and exercises is given in a separate document. The rooms and even the buildings where the seminars are given might be different on some weeks.

Registration before October 3 is obligatory for this seminar. The maximum number of participants is 20 and admission is based on the order of registration. This registration should be done with Amy Chamberlain (2432). Researchers who would like to use their own data are asked to provide information about these data at the moment of registration.

The exercises we use are given in the end of the chapters of ‘A Stata Companion to Political Analysis’ by Philip H., III Pollock. It also contains a CD-Rom with data-sets for these exercises, and you can use them to practice. But for your exercises you have to use the European Social Survey, third wave (http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/. These ESS data are both more useful for comparative research and make more sense within a European context. You should adapt these exercises to the ESS, using your sociological or political imagination, by using variables from the ESS.

SPECIAL INTENSIVE COURSES

Introduction to data analysis for absolute beginners (catch-up course preparatory to the Elementary Data Analysis Seminar: 29^th and 30th September 2010 (Mark Franklin)

Introduction to STATA for users of SPSS (conversion course for those intending to take quantitative methods seminars at any level: 30^th September 2010. (Mark Franklin)

Researchers in need of these skills are strongly advised to follow these classes although no extra credits will be awarded.