Re: st: Spss vs Stata

[Joseph McDonnell <jockmcdock@gmail.com>]

Yves

I can sympathise. I too used SPSS for many years (along with GLIM,
BMDP, Genstat, Minitab and a few others). I wouldn't go back if you
paid me.

By coincidence, my last version of SPSS was also 12. So I don't like
to criticise it in its current form. I agree the output format is
pretty, but I never once imported a SPSS table into a Word document
that was "ready for publication". I always constructed my tables in
Word itself. So, I'm not convinced that that aspect of it is a great
advantage.

Welcome to the list. I hope you have great pleasure with Stata.

Cheers

Joseph

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Yves Therriault <ytherriault@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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