Re: st: Stata vs. SPSS

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

At 08:48 PM 9/6/2004 -0400, Bill Oetjen wrote:
> Hello Folks,
> I'm a new subscriber and have an urgent question:
>
> When buying books for my Intro to Educational Research course at my 
> university, I noticed that the required software was SPSS.  It was only 
> available in windows platform.  As an exclusive Mac user, that kind of 
> leaves me out of the loop.
> I noticed that Stata does a good job in OS X.
> Can anyone comment on major differences between Stata and SPSS?
I used SPSS exclusively for several years in my graduate statistics 
courses.  This past year I also started using Stata.  My students said they 
liked using both programs.  At the end a majority said they preferred 
SPSS.  I think much of this was comfort and familiarity -- most had used 
SPSS as undergrads and most had never even heard of Stata.  Under our site 
licensing agreements it is also cheaper for them to get personal copies of 
SPSS than it is Stata.  I suspect their appreciation for Stata will grow 
with time, as I know many of our more advanced students use it for one 
reason or another.

I have numerous handouts that contain examples of both.  Perhaps the 
clearest comparison can be found in these regression handouts:

http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/stats1/OLS-Stata.pdf

http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/stats1/OLS-SPSS.pdf

Lots of other examples of both SPSS and Stata can be found at

http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/stats1/

http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/stats2/


-------------------------------------------
Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
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EMAIL:  Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.Edu
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