Summary of survey software: Stata

Vendor

StataCorp

Types of designs that can be accommodated.

Types of estimands and statistical analyses that can be accommodated.

There are about currently about 20 Stata commands for various analyses of survey data, including the following analyses and others:

Restrictions on number of variables or observations.

Maximum number of observations limited only by computer RAM (virtual memory can be used, but commands run slower). Maximum number of variables is 32,767 with Stata/SE and 2047 with Intercooled Stata.

Primary methods used for variance estimation.

Taylor-series linearization is used in the survey analysis commands. There are also commands for jackknife and bootstrap variance estimation; although these are not specifically oriented to survey data they will accomodate survey features like clustering and stratification.

General description of the "feel" of the software.

Stata is a complete statistical software package with full statistical, data management, and graphical capabilities. It can be run interactively or in batch mode, and is fully programmable. The survey commands are part of the standard software package. Initially, data can be read in from ASCII files and a Stata-format data file created; or data in other file formats can be translated to Stata format using a stand-alone software package (Stat/Transfer or DBMS/Copy).

Platforms on which the software can be run.

Software distributed as precompiled object program.

Availability, pricing and terms.

One-time purchase. Upgrade purchases are optional. Generous academic discount. Volume discounts and student discounts.
Example: Academic price for one, single-user copy ranges from $469 to $745 depending on the version and amount of documentation.

Contact information.

StataCorp
4905 Lakeway Drive
College Station, TX 77845
800-782-8272 (U.S.)
800-248-8272 (Canada)
979-696-4600 (Worldwide)
979-696-4601 (Fax)
E-mail: stata@stata.com
Web site: http://www.stata.com

Additional information

This software is discussed in the review article from The Survey Statistician.


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