Spring 2013
NOTES: This web page is under development. Links will become live when they are ready. Click here if you want to see the online notes and handouts from the last time the course was taught. Some of these will be updated for this course. My notes from Graduate Statistics I are also available.
My Stata Highlights page includes links to Stata and statistical handouts from my other courses that may interest readers.
Stata and SPSS are in the labs. You can also order your own personal copy of Stata through the GradPlan package. I recommend the Intercooled Stata 12 with PDF documentation for $179. Cheaper and more expensive packages are also available.
The following special types of files are used on this web page:
Pdf files. Require Adobe Acrobat. Toolbook files. SPSSWIN files. Necessary for doing homework problems. Can probably be adapted for other SPSS platforms. You should save these files to your local hard disk and then use them with SPSS. Stata files. Necessary for doing homework problems.You should save these files to your local hard disk and then use them with Stata. In addition, some files are in zipped (compressed) format. If you don't have an unzipping program (e.g. Winzip), you can use the free PC Magazine PCDEZIP utility.
Finally, please note that the answer keys for the exams and homework differ in the amount of detail provided. I sometimes give very detailed answers, other times the answers are much more minimal (and given the information provided I assume the student can figure out the rest). Students should always aim for complete answers in their homework and exams. In particular, it is hard to give partial credit when it is not clear why an error was made.
Readings Packet (You need a Notre Dame NETID to access these)
Notre Dame's Center for Social Research (has links to several data sets and describes support services)
Dropbox. I strongly encourage you to set up a Dropbox account if you do not already have one. Dropbox gives you a minimum of 2GB of free online storage. More critically, with Dropbox you can set up shared folders. This makes it much easier when you want me or others to help you with your research. You can create a folder, put your data and programs in it, and then share the folder with me. If you set up an account use your .edu email address because you can get more bonus storage that way. For more click on this link. Or, you may wish to use the Box feature offered by Notre Dame. I've never used it but it sounds like a good service. Note, however, that you lose access to Box after you graduate, so you'll eventually need to copy your files somewhere else. See http://oithelp.nd.edu/shared-file-space/box/ .
Useful sites for learning about Stata and SPSS
UCLA's Statistical Computing Resources RW Suggestions for Using Stata at Notre Dame UCLA's SPSS Starter Kit Resources for learning Stata UCLA - How does Stata compare with SAS and SPSS? The Stata User Support Page Ben Jann's estout/esttab support page (esttab & estout are great for formatting output from Stata)
PART I: In this section, we briefly review the basics of OLS regression. We talk about some of the most common issues (measurement error, missing data, violations of OLS assumptions) encountered in regression analysis.
reg01.sav - Data file used in the SPSS Regression handout
reg01.dta - Data file used in the Stata Regression handout
Also Recommended: Wisconsin SSCC's Multiple Imputation in Stata: Introduction. If you want to do serious analysis using Multiple Imputation, you should be sure to read this.
Also Recommended: Robert Yaffee's Robust Regression Modeling with Stata (This is 93 pages long but it is basically overhead slides and hence much shorter than it at first appears to be. Nice discussions of how to deal with outliers and with heteroskedasticity.)
Also Recommended: UCLA's Regression Diagnostics Page. Shows a lot of the techniques that are available with Stata for detecting outliers, heteroskedasticity, multicollinearity, serial correlation and other problems with regression models.
PART II: This section shows how regression can be used to properly specify a causal model. We begin by introducing "the logic of causal order," which lets us understand the different kinds of causal relationships that might be present between variables. Common model mis-specifications are then addressed (e.g. omitted variables, extraneous variables, variables with nonlinear effects). We discuss how to choose between alternative causal models. Finally, we introduce path analysis as a method for causal modeling.
tbklogic.zip These are toolbook presentations which we will go over in class.
[NOTE: You may have trouble using this with Win 7. I did with Win7 64 bit. But it can be done. If you really want to do so I can tell you how to do it.]
SURPRISE BONUS TOPIC!!! Brief Overview of Survey Data Analysis. By default, most statistical techniques assume that data were collected via simple random sampling. This is often not true for large national data sets. Fortunately, Stata makes it easy to analyze such data, but there are some important differences in how you go about testing hypotheses and assessing model fit.
UCLA's (see lower third of page) and StataCorp's FAQS on Survey Data Analysis (Optional; you may want to refer to these if you use the SVY commands)
PART III: Here, we develop path analysis techniques more fully. We talk about more complicated models that cannot be accurately estimated through conventional OLS regression techniques (e.g. nonrecursive models). We also talk about situations where the nature of the data make OLS regression inappropriate (e.g. dichotomous dependent variables) or less than optimal.
Brief Overviews of Other Advanced Methods.
Advanced Categorical Data Analysis (Optional). Depending on your research topics you may want to look at some of the notes from my Soc 73994 class.
Extremely Brief Overviews of Event History Analysis and Hierarchical Linear Modeling -- Read Ch. 9 of Paul Allison's Multiple Regression Primer, paying particular attention to section 9.9 (Multilevel Models) and section 9.12 (Event History Analysis)
Other materials may be available upon request.
