Hello, and welcome to Introduction to Stata (learn at your own pace)

How to work through the course (please read this before you begin)

The course works from absolute beginner (never having even opened Stata before) through to loading in datasets, manipulating data, performing simple statistical analyses, producing graphs, and finally a number of common hypothesis tests. Therefore, it is important to work through each session sequentially from Session 1 through to Session 6 as the complexity builds as the sessions progress.

At the end of most of the sessions (Session 2 through to Session 5) there are practical exercises to practice what you have learnt in the demonstrations independently. When you have attempted these, the solutions to the exercises are also demonstrated. Do try to resist the temptation follow along with the solutions without attempting them first, you will learn more as a result.

I would recommend firstly to head to the 'Resources' heading where you will find 4 key documents:

• A full PDF of the notes this short course is based on (the videos follow a similar order, but generally the demonstrations and notes can be used independently of each other)

• A PDF of the exercises

• The dataset used for all the analyses in Stata format

• The same dataset in Excel (specifically csv) format

I also say this at the start of the course, but I would recommend downloading all four of these files onto a USB that you will use for the duration of the course; it will make it easier to locate your datasets as you progress through the material.

If you get stuck during the course, for example, you are following along with the material but something has gone wrong, or you aren't getting the same output, or you think the syntax you are using should be working but isn't, you can reach out for help. On the resources page, there is also a working document called "Intro to Stata - questions and answers" (I also refer to this as the 'Discussion Board' in the video demonstrations). Here you can add a question to the relevant section, and by including the comment (instructions provided in the document), it will alert me via email and I can answer as soon as possible. As the course develops, you might find someone else has already asked the same question. This working document is available for support throughout the whole short course period (from 13th September, to 8th October 2021) so do try to make timely use of it.  After the 8th October, the document will be for reference only.

Finally, the live demonstrations were recorded specifically for this course. There might be instances of technical issues, or I have missed a time where I happened to have coughed and not edited this out. If so, I apologise, but do let me know on the same document and I can address it.

I hope you find the material useful, and by the end of the course you have the confidence to approach an analysis in Stata with the skills you have developed.

I hope you can't wait to get Stata-ed (started...). Sorry...

Dr Dan Green