Data Analysis



Introduction

In this session you will learn the basics of data management and analysis using Stata. The first part of the presentation will focus on combining datasets through the append and merge commands. Section two will introduce five commands to help you summarize and tabulate your data. The final part covers data export and how to automate routine tasks using loops.

Part 2 Goals

  1. combine datasets using append and merge
  2. summarize datasets across different dimensions using:
    • summary
    • tabulation
    • table
    • tabstat
    • collapse
  3. export data for use in other programs (Excel, Tableau, R,…)
  4. automate tasks through loops

Key Stata functions for combining and summarizing data

  • append: append to datasets together
  • merge: merged datasets together using unique identifiers
  • summarize: produce summary statistics
  • tabulate: produce table of frequencies
  • table: produce flexible table of summary statistics
  • tabstat: produce compact table of summary statistics
  • collapse: create dataset of summary statistics (modifies the dataframe)
  • forvalues: loop over consecutive values
  • foreach: loop over items

Exercises

  • Exercise 1: Merge household data into individual data
  • Exercise 2: Collapse and summarizing foreign assistance data
  • Exercise 3: Loop over household assets
  • Exercise 4: Loop over geographic zones
  • Exercise 5: Execute mathematical operations through loops

Exercise


Pseudocoding a task

Exercise


Reshaping messy data into tidy data

Homework


Merging datasets and creating summary statistics

Answers


Merging datasets and creating summary statistics







Up next…

Now that we have learned about the fundamentals of data munging, we will move on to some principles of data visualization.