st: Spss vs Stata

[Yves Therriault <ytherriault@gmail.com>]

Dear Stata users,

I've been using SPSS for 20 years. For the time being, I still use a
six years old version of SPSS (12.01). For many reasons, I told my
organisation that I would rather purchasing one licence of Stata
instead of upgrading to the newest release of SPSS (18.0).

A few months ago, I've asked former SPSS users to write about their
experience with Stata. Generally, people who have decided to switch
from SPSS to Stata aren't looking back.

In order to learn the basics of Stata more easily when the software is
installed on my computer, I bought 3 introductory books : A Gentle
Introduction to Stata ; An Introduction to Stata for Health
Researchers and, finally Data Analysis Using Stata.

I'm interested to hear from those who made the switch to Stata and
particularly about the lurning curve regarding the management of Stata
output. Generally, Stata seems to be far more superior to SPSS in many
ways. But, in my humble opinion, Stata is currently far behind SPSS
concerning how it displays its output. I'm aware that a lot of
routines have been written by Stata users to customize outputs though.

Just in case Stata programmers were monitoring this list, I would be
very pleased if the company decided to "improve" the output display in
a future release. Perhaps, another possible feature would gave the
user the choice between a "standard" Stata output and a Spss-like
output.

Of course, I don't intent to start a controversy here.  Maybe I'm just
an "old SPSS user" who is a little bit afraid to have to learn a new
syntax ! : - )

Finally, I just want tell you all how much I appreciate this list.
This is a very nice and vibrant community. I'm sure that I will learn
a lot from Stata experts as soon as I start using the software.

Kind regards,

Yves (Province de Québec)

P.S. Sorry for the bad English. I write in English just once in a while.

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