QS101 – Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Social Science Week 2: Introduction to Stata and Preparation of Field Work Florian Reiche Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Methods Course Director, BA Politics and Sociology Deputy Director for Student Experience and Progression, PAIS F.Reiche@warwick.ac.uk

The Route Today Two Parts Introduction to Stata Preparation of Field Work

Resource Update http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/q-step/currentstudents/qs101

PART 1

Conventions Normal Text Stata commands

The First Screen Command History Output Variable List Command Line

describe

What does a data set look like?  edit Variables Observations

Naming Variables Bad examples: q23, fubar, GenExp1 Good examples: age, gender, etc. No blanks Start with a letter Up to 10 characters Lower case

Entering data 1 Start with the following commands: clear edit

Edit / Browse Variable List Properties

Change Variable names

Syntax rename var1 id

Data sample What is your gender? Male 1 Female 2 Rate Warwick Awesome Even more Awesome Most Awesomest 3

Value Labels

Value labels (contd.)

Value labels (contd.)

Value labels (contd.)

Syntax again rename var2 gender label define sex 1 "Male" 2 "Female" label values gender sex If you want to look at an overview, type: codebook gender

Save the data set File  Save as  .dta

Good to know If you accidentally enter a letter, Stata turns the variable into a “string” variable Simple remedy: destring varlist, replace e.g. destring id, replace

PART 2

The Task Topic: The Intro Week Experience Conduct a small survey to assess how students assess the quality of intro week N: ~10 Design a questionnaire with about 10 questions Interviews will be conducted next week

A Guide to Questionnaire Design Conducting a Survey is complex You will learn this later on during the degree Here: Purpose defined Population: Students of Warwick Uni Type: Face to Face

A Guide to Questionnaire Design (contd.) Be clear about the focus of your research Which issues do you want to assess?  This will determine the focus of the questions you ask

A Guide to Questionnaire Design (contd.) Decide on a particular sequence of questions Prepare to tell people what the survey is about (intro statement) Begin with interesting questions More sensitive questions at the end (?) In any case, sequence needs to be logical

How to ask questions Avoid leading questions Be short and sweet No double negations, or double questions

A Guide to Questionnaire Design (contd.) Open versus closed questions Here: closed questions Single versus multiple response Here: Single response Likert Scales Very interesting, interesting, uninteresting, very uninteresting

Off you pop! Come together in groups of 3 Use the rest of the seminar to design your questionnaire Work on the questionnaire until next week, and make sure it is ready (see homework) Use literature! Put in at least 3 hours!

Homework, seminar, week 3 Ensure to have a finalised version of your questionnaire ready. Make sufficient hard copies of the questionnaire to conduct individual interviews (unless you want to go digital).