Re: st: Re: Your paper on Stata,SAS and SPSS

["John F Hall" <johnfhall@orange.fr>]

Alan

I only joined the list two days ago, so I haven't had a chance to find much 
Stata syntax to set alongside SPSS.  Listers have sent one or two 
one-liners, but with no accompanying output examples.

I'm talking about reading from a raw data matrix, adding variable and value 
labels, declaring missing values, data transformations, index construction 
and the like (possibly via correlation) followed by simple analysis like 
frequency counts, barcharts and contingency tables using %%, not fancy 
multivariate inferential statistics.  Had I still been teaching, that would 
have come much later in my course, but far too late for the survey report 
that had to be on the client's desk by yesterday.

You're welcome to download data sets and tutorials from my site and offer 
Stata examples to set alongside the SPSS syntax and output (no GUI for me: 
far too cumbersome, complex and tiresome).

John Hall
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Alan Acock
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Cc: Michael.Norman.Mitchell@gmail.com ; spssx-l@listserv.uga.edu ; Bruce 
Weaver
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 5:43 PM
Subject: Re: st: Re: Your paper on Stata,SAS and SPSS



John Hall indicates that with the limited math/statistics background of his 
students, the "syntax examples I have seen in Stata, . . . would easily put 
(them) off." I'm not sure what examples John has seen. Often those shared on 
statalist are technical and not appropriate to beginning students. If you 
think about a basic introductory research courses in the social sciences, 
the actual Stata commands that would be relevant are vastly simpler than 
those used in SPSS or SAS. For SPSS readers who don't appreciate this, here 
are a few
examples they might compare to the lengthy syntax needed by SPSS

(chi-square test)
.table var1 var2, chi2

(independent t-test)
.ttest var1 var2

(grouped t-test)
.ttest var1, by(gender)

(Correlation matrix)
.corr var1 - var10

(OLS regression)
.regress y x1 x2 x3, beta

(logistic regression)
.logit y x1 x2 x3, or

If they get a little more advanced and do a Poisson regression, compare the 
SPSS command to do a Poisson regression to Stata's--Really--try it in SPSS
.poisson y x1 x2 x3

How about doing a principal component "factor" analysis--the default type in 
SPSS. In Stata the command is:
.factor x1 -x10, pcf
Then, if you want a varimax rotation you have the post estimation command
.rotate

Stata's goal is "type a little, get a little." The output wastes far less 
space than does SPSS. There are options and post estimation commands for 
more advance users. For example, if you want alpha for a 10-item sale you 
would enter
.alpha var1 - var10
If you wanted item analysis like SPSS or SAS provide, you would enter
.alpha var1 - var10, item

Of course, Stata has excellent menus, but the reason Stata users don't use 
them as much as SPSS users is less the acknowledged elegance of the SPSS 
menus than it is the rigid structure of Stata commands resulting in much 
simpler command structure (syntax) than is found in SPSS. I suspect that if 
John listed all the procedures he taught in his research methods course, the 
Stata commands could be all listed on a single page.

Although Stata is vastly more powerful than SPSS for advanced statistical 
applications (as well as a fraction of the cost), Stata is also much less 
cumbersome for elementary applications. I was motivated to write my "Gentle 
Introduction to Stata" (StataPress), because many books about Stata focused 
on advanced applications and many social/behavioral scientists had the 
notion that Stata was just for advanced users. I believe that the advantages 
of Stata are even greater for beginners--not to mention offering them 
greater opportunity for growth.

Alan Acock




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