A Stata Companion to Political Analysis

Assigned text for a statistical methods course and applicable for Stata users (there is a similar book for SPSS users). It is very well written and easy to follow with exercises at the end of each chapter to use for practice on the chapter's concepts. On the whole, it left me mostly "meh!" with many unanswered questions at the end. The publisher provides four Stata-ready datasets for use in the exercises (slightly modified versions of the 2012 General Social Survey and 2012 National Election Study; and datasets for US states and other nations), but does not spend any time on how datasets are constructed, which should be a point of emphasis. Each chapter deals with some very basic commands with little that goes outside of those. It is basically a bunch of "load this dataset, type in these commands and 'presto!' Wasn't that cool?" If the goal is to learn to type in commands and have a rudimentary understanding of the results those commands generate, it's decent. But if the goal is to learn how to use Stata to generate answers your own questions, it's sadly lacking. If it's an assigned text, there isn't much you can do aside from gritting your teeth and hoping that the professor will fill in the gaps. If you're doing the self-learning approach, it might be a decent start, but won't be as thorough as you would want and there isn't any way to check the results of the exercises.

I'm using this book in an Intro to Research Methods class. The book definitely helps in unpacking what's going on in Stata. There are some areas where the codes the book says to use and the codes Stata will accept that don't quite match up. In all, I'm glad I have it. It's been a huge help. I wouldn't attempt Stata without it.

Rough condition sold as "good"

Great buy thank you

I purchased this book for class. I do not enjoy Stata and this text was helpful but not perfect. If you have a more solid statistics background it may work well for you.

For School

exactly what what was required for my daughters poly sci. Great price and fast ship

Excellent condition.