Stata learning resources and training courses

This page provides updates about available learning resources and upcoming Stata training courses in South Africa.

Getting Started

The Introduction to Stata Basics webpage is a comprehensive resource designed to assist new and existing Stata users in mastering the software. It offers structured guidance on various aspects of using Stata, categorised into sections mirroring Stata’s capabilities: data management, graphics, data analysis, and reporting. Each section features worked examples that show command syntax, usage of common options, and interpretation of results, alongside deeper insights to ensure thorough understanding.

Key topics covered include:

• Basics: Starting with Stata, finding help, and using example datasets.
• Importing and Exporting Data: Methods to handle data from Excel, CSV, SPSS, SAS, and websites, including Federal Reserve Economic Data.
• Data Manipulation: Techniques for labelling, customising display formats, rounding data, converting data types, and creating new variables.
• Immediate Commands: Calculators for statistical tests and measures.
• Visualisation: Creating pie charts, bar charts, box plots, histograms, and scatterplots.
• Regression Modelling and Visualisation: Guidance on simple linear regression, using factor-variable notation, and exploring interactions with the `margins` and `marginsplot` commands.

Visit the Introduction to Stata Basics webpage to start learning and enhancing your Stata skills.

Stata learning resources

Learn Stata by enrolling for one of StataCorp's convenient web-based courses or find short courses offered by independent sources in your country.

Available NetCourses

• NetCourse 101: Introduction to Stata
  An introductory 6-week course that teaches how to use Stata interactively.
• NetCourse 120: Statistical Graphics Using Stata
  An introductory 6-week course that teaches Stata's statistical graphics features in the context of data analysis.
• NetCourse 151: Introduction to Stata Programming
  An introductory 6-week course that teaches Stata data-analysis programming to those who have a basic knowledge of using Stata interactively.
• NetCourse 251: Writing Your Own Stata Commands
  An advanced 7-week course that teaches how to add new commands.
• NetCourse 461: Univariate Time Series with Stata
  An introductory 7-week course that teaches the practical aspects of time series that are most needed by practitioners and applied researchers.
• NetCourse 471: Introduction to Panel Data Using Stata
  An introductory 6-week course that teaches the practical and conceptual aspects that are fundamental for practitioners and applied researchers who want to perform rigorous panel-data analysis.
• NetCourse 631: Introduction to Survival Analysis Using Stata
  An introductory 7-week course that teaches concepts such as censoring, truncation, hazard rates, and survivor functions, as well as the analysis of survival data.

For more information please visit the Stata website.

Free, short and convenient webinars to learn about Stata from the experts. Visit the webinar page on Stata’s website to see the available webinars.

Upcoming specialised webinars:

Stata 19—see the new features in action

23 September 2025, 11:00 a.m. CDT

Discover the power of machine learning with H2OML, save time with HDFE, and unveil heterogeneous causal effects with CATE.

Stata 19 introduces powerful new features designed to enhance your research, improve efficiency, and streamline reporting. Key developments include statistical features in causal inference, panel-data analysis, and Bayesian analysis, along with new features in tables and graphics, interface improvements, and more. Join Meghan Cain, Assistant Director, Educational Services, as she takes you on this guided tour of Stata 19.

This webinar will provide an overview of Stata 19 features, highlights, and even some demonstrations.

If you haven’t checked out all the new features in Stata 19 yet, join this webinar to see what you’re missing.

Ask Stata: Linear regression

30 September 2025, 11:00 a.m. CDT

Looking for real-time answers to your Stata questions?

Stata's Technical Services team invites you to join Ask Stata, our online support session series offering live Q&A and insightful demonstrations on a variety of rotating topics. It’s the perfect opportunity to connect directly with our experts and fellow users. Feel free to bring questions or just listen in. We will prioritize answering Stata-related questions tied to the session topic. Just a heads-up: these interactive sessions won't be recorded.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Tips and tricks

1 October 2025, 2:00 p.m. CDT
4 December 2025, 12:00 p.m. CST

Discover some of Stata's hidden (and not so hidden) gems. In our Tips and tricks webinar, we share a few of our developers' favorite features of Stata with you. We include the following tips:

• Labels three ways
• Standardizing graphs using the Graph Recorder
• So you fit a model, now what?
• Interpreting and understanding your model
• Turn interactive use into reproducible results
• Working with Word

Join us for this one-hour webinar, and learn how you can make your interactions with Stata more efficient and more effective.

Conditional average treatment-effects estimation using Stata

15 October 2025, 11:00 a.m. CDT

Treatment effects estimate the causal effects of a treatment on an outcome. We usually estimate average treatment effects (ATE), but taking an average across a population may not be useful when the effect is heterogeneous. Average treatment effects conditional on a set of variables (CATEs) help us understand heterogeneous treatment effects, and, by construction, are useful to evaluate how different treatment-assignment policies affect different groups in the population.

In this webinar, we will show how to use Stata 19's new command cate to answer questions such as the following:

• Are the treatment effects heterogeneous?
• How do the treatment effects vary with some variables?
• Do the treatment effects vary across prespecified groups?
• Are there unknown groups in the data for which treatment effects differ?
• Which is best among possible treatment-assignment rules?

Ask Stata: Customizable tables

28 October 2025, 11:00 a.m. CDT

Looking for real-time answers to your Stata questions?

Stata's Technical Services team invites you to join Ask Stata, our online support session series offering live Q&A and insightful demonstrations on a variety of rotating topics. It’s the perfect opportunity to connect directly with our experts and fellow users. Feel free to bring questions or just listen in. We will prioritize answering Stata-related questions tied to the session topic. Just a heads-up: these interactive sessions won't be recorded.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Ready. Set. Go Stata.

5 November 2025, 2:00 p.m. CST
8 January 2026, 11:00 a.m. CST

New to Stata? Ready to analyze your data but not sure where to start?

If you are asking yourself questions such as

• How do I get data into Stata?
• What tools are available for manipulating and cleaning data?
• How can I create and customize scatterplots, histograms, and other graphs?
• How do I fit a model and graph the results?
• How do I find resources for learning Stata?

then join us for our webinar introducing Stata. In this one-hour webinar, we will take you on a tour of Stata, show you how to answer questions like these, and show you how to go even further. Ask questions in the live offering, or get started now by watching this tutorial yourself.

Machine learning using Stata via H2O

13 November 2025, 11:00 a.m. CST

Which customers will default on their loan? How will stock prices change in the coming weeks? What key factors drive surgical success?

High-performance machine learning methods can answer questions like these and many more, even when the data-generating process is complex. With the new h2oml suite in Stata, you can implement two of the most used models in machine learning via H2O: gradient boosting machine (GBM) and random forest (RF).

In this webinar, we will see how to fit these models to predict continuous, binary, and multinomial outcomes; how to evaluate model performance; and how to optimally select model hyperparameters. We will also explore the tools available in Stata to interpret and explain the predictions of our machine learning models. These include variable importance, global surrogate models, partial dependence plots, ICE curves, and Shapley values.

Ask Stata: Panel data

2 December 2025, 11:00 a.m. CST

Looking for real-time answers to your Stata questions?

Stata's Technical Services team invites you to join Ask Stata, our online support session series offering live Q&A and insightful demonstrations on a variety of rotating topics. It’s the perfect opportunity to connect directly with our experts and fellow users. Feel free to bring questions or just listen in. We will prioritize answering Stata-related questions tied to the session topic. Just a heads-up: these interactive sessions won't be recorded.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Stata News User's corner highlights interesting, useful, or just plain fun user contributions. Visit the User’s Corner on the Stata website for complete archive of all contributions.

Stata has a large collection of video tutorials freely available from the official Stata YouTube channel.

Get started with a quick tour of Stata:

Handy reference sheets covering Stata syntax, data processing, programming, etc.

Visit https://www.stata.com/bookstore/stata-cheat-sheets to download.

Upcoming Stata training courses in South Africa

Keep an eye on our website for updates on future training courses as they become available.