Stata technical support policy

Eligibility for Technical Services

All registered users of the current release of Stata (Stata 12) and the previous release (Stata 11) are eligible for free technical support. If you have not registered your copy of Stata, please fill out the online registration form.

If you are using a network copy of Stata or if your institution has a Stata lease, it is unlikely that you are the registered user. This is not a problem, and you are still eligible for technical support, but you will need to provide the Stata serial number that you are using. (To locate the Stata serial number, type about at the Stata command prompt.) You will also need to have access to the Stata documentation.

Determine if your question is appropriate for technical support

Would you look for the answer to your question in a statistics book or in the Stata documentation? If the answer would be in a statistics book, then your question may not be appropriate for technical support, but there are alternatives.

• Statalist

  Statalist is an independently operated listserver for Stata users. For more information, see the Statalist FAQ. If you want to perform a statistical procedure that Stata appears not to do, first try searching through Stata’s resources. If you do not find what you are looking for, perhaps someone is working on this now. To find out, ask Statalist. If you want advice about the statistical merits of using particular approaches, Statalisters would be a good group to ask.

• NetCourses

  If you are new to Stata and would like to take a course, we recommend NetCourse 101, Introduction to Stata. If you want to learn how to write Stata programs and you want more assistance than the Stata documentation provides, we recommend that you enroll in NetCourse 151, Introduction to Stata programming, or NetCourse 152, Advanced Stata programming.

• Other websites

  Many websites have tutorials and other resources for learning Stata. Links to these sites can be found on Stata’s resource links page.

• Bookstore

  If you want to learn about a statistical technique, we would be happy to recommend an appropriate text, or you could visit our Bookstore for information on available texts.

Contact Technical Services

If you cannot find the answer to your question using the resources above, please contact Stata Technical Services.