In this tutorial, you will learn Stata commands for combining cleaned data files to make an analysis file. This tutorial assumes that you have a limited knowledge of Stata. If you don’t know any Stata at all, you may find it helpful to complete the OpenSDP Data Exploration Tutorial before starting this one.
In Part 1, you will briefly inspect cleaned student, test score, and school data files. In Part 2, you will combine the student and test score files; in Part 3, you will add information about schools; and in Part 4 you will define several derived variables.
You will need to have Stata version 12 or higher installed on your computer to run this tutorial. Download, unzip, and extract the files. Open the .smcl file, and arrange the viewer and main Stata windows side by side so that you can see them both. Work through the tutorial by clicking on commands in the viewer window or typing them into the Stata command window.
This tutorial was originally authored by the Strategic Data Project.
OpenSDP is an online, public repository of analytic code, tools, and training intended to foster collaboration among education analysts and researchers in order to accelerate the improvement of our school systems. The community is hosted by the Strategic Data Project, an initiative of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. We welcome contributions and feedback.