(Last updated in Jan 2023 to fix typos (thanks to Staurt Leske), and do minor edits and updates to redundant parts.)
Dear reader,
First of all, thanks for stopping by, and showing interest in the Stata Guide!
The Guide would not have been possible without the support and encouragement from the community. I have received countless messages, comments, suggestions, and feedback on various articles, all of which have tremendously helped in improving the content. I wanted to write this small article to explain the motivation behind all of this.
Why Stata?
In academia, Stata has been the go-to language for years. Having been involved in a dozen of projects in institutions like LUMS, the World Bank, DFID, USAID, J-PAL, CERP, and others, Stata was, and still is, the core software used for analysis. While the current orientation might be more towards open-source, data science-oriented languages, like R and Python, my current academic/research circle uses only Stata. And this is unlikely to change in the next few years. I myself started using Stata around 2003 during my Masters’ program. This was a major leap from other softwares available at that point in time, for example, TSP and SPSS. Therefore, for me personally, there is also a lock-in effect. I am also constantly dealing with other…
