Re: st: who can caompare stata with spss and sas

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@nd.edu>]

At 11:52 AM 12/18/2003 +0800, rghuang wrote:
> i am study sociology, which sofeware is the most suitable.
> anyone can give me some suggestion? thank you.
> my department use spss,and i now want to use stata,but i don't know 
> whether stata is capable in sociology research?
> i will be of great appreciation if you reply my letter.
Sure, Stata is fine for Sociological research.  Here at Notre Dame, it has 
been used by both undergraduate students in introductory statistics courses 
and by some of our most high tech researchers.  For an example of its use 
in a Sociology graduate statistics course, see my colleague's web page at

http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/courses/old/593sp01/

Of course, SPSS is a fine program too; I've used it for almost 30 years.  A 
lot of it is just what you are used to.  But, I'm starting to use Stata 
more and more and I'm starting to teach my students how to use it 
too.  Stata's statistical routines are much more consistent and logical 
than SPSS's.  I generally find that I can do anything I want in SPSS, but 
it is often easier to do it in Stata.  Particular favorites of mine are the 
-test- and -adjust- commands.  I still tend to do most of my database 
manipulation in SPSS but that is partly because I haven't bothered to learn 
all the corresponding Stata commands; nor do I have a great need to learn 
them since with Stat Transfer it is easy to convert data files from one 
format to another.

I'm sure others can give you links to detailed comparisons of features, but 
if the main question is, is Stata ok for sociologists, the answer is 
certainly yes.  Whether it is worth your while to become the only Stata 
person in an SPSS environment may be another question.


-------------------------------------------
Richard Williams, Associate Professor
OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
FAX:    (574)288-4373
HOME:   (574)289-5227
EMAIL:  Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.Edu
WWW (personal):    http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam
WWW (department):    http://www.nd.edu/~soc

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