Contingency tables etc. in Stata and SPSS

[John F Hall]

Greetings from an Old SPSS Dog

 

Just been browsing round the Stata site to see if I can find any comparisons between Stata and SPSS for simple procedures like frequency counts and crosstabs.  I'd like to display parallel examples of syntax and default output.  I found one or two articles in the Stata Journal, but the kind of tables I'm looking for are not there.  The ones I found (but some were quite old) were:

 

[hidden email] <[hidden email]>

Tabulation of multiple responses

Stata Journal Volume 5 Number 1: pp. 92-122

 

[hidden email]

Stata tip 20: Generating histogram bin variables

Stata Journal Volume 5 Number 2: pp. 280-281
Stata tip 34: Tabulation by listing

Stata Journal Volume 6 Number 3.

 

st: RE: Percentages in cross-tabulation

• • From: "Nick Cox" <[hidden email]>
• Re: st: Percentages in cross-tabulation
  • From: Edwin Leuven <[hidden email]>

I've been using SPSS since 1972 and am a regular contributor to SPSSX-L@... .  From recent postings it seems many universities are now switching to Stata because of the cost of SPSS (there is a fierce debate on the list about the IBM/SPSS business model and some heart-breaking appeals from longtime users of SPSS: "Inexpensive 'home' version") and I want to investigate its capabilities for the kind of work I'm doing. 

 

Since September last year, have been developing a new website.  Journeys in Survey Research is in two sections: one for survey research and one for SPSS/PASW, but with other stuff as well.  The survey side has (not easily available, if at all) materials from my time as Senior Research Fellow at the SSRC Survey Unit 1970-76 (UK) particularly working papers, reports etc from the Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life) surveys conducted by the late Dr Mark Abrams and myself in association with the late Prof Angus Campbell (ISR): other material is from my time as Director of the Survey Research Unit at the then Polytechnic of North London 1976 - 1992 (now part of London Metropolitan University).

 

The SPSS/PASW section contains extensive (gentle step-by-step with full screenshots at each step) syntax-based tutorials (converted and updated from SPSS-X 4 for a Vax mainframe under VMS to SPSS for Windows on a PC) from the postgraduate (part-time, evening) Survey Analysis Workshop I developed and taught from 1976 to 1992, when I took early retirement.  There are many SPSS courses around, but they are mostly statistical: mine is about survey research, different and possibly more fun.

 

All materials are available for free download.

 

If anyone can point me in the direction of any Stata output like the tables and other materials on my website, I'd be grateful., also for feedback on ease of use and understanding.

 

Regards

 

John Hall
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com

 

PS  The opening greeting is a reference to Old Dog, Old Tricks: presentation and slide-shows covering survey analysis before SPSS, history and development of SPSS, uses and abuses of SPSS in major surveys, syntax versus GUI and replication of exercises from Julie Pallant's SPSS Survival Manual 

(Annual conference of ASSESS,  SPSS users in Europe, University of York, 2006)