Introduction to Stata

A three-day live online short course from Bristol Medical School for anyone starting out with Stata, covering the basic syntax you need to manage, explore and summarise research data and produce tables and graphs.

Stata is one of the most widely used statistical software packages in health and medical research. This course introduces the software and its use for data management and data exploration, giving you an overview of basic Stata syntax so you can manage and manipulate data and produce summary statistics and graphs.

For dementia researchers, Stata is a staple of dementia epidemiology and cohort studies. If you are weighing up which software to learn, our guide to free research tools for PhD students covers the alternatives, and Drowning in data sets? Here’s how to cut them down to size has practical tips for working with large datasets.

What the course covers

1. Getting started with Stata, including loading and saving files and finding help
2. Listing, describing and summarising data
3. Naming and labelling variables
4. Subsetting data
5. Generating and replacing variables
6. Creating tables
7. Importing data from other programs and merging datasets
8. Logs and do-files to document output and code
9. Creating graphs
10. Working with dates (optional)

The course does not cover statistical testing, although basic commands are included in the course materials.

What you will learn

By the end of the course you should be able to:

• Find help on a given topic or command
• Explore a dataset in several ways
• Add labels to make a dataset self-documenting
• Recode variables and derive new ones
• Reorganise and simplify a dataset and handle missing values
• Input data from a variety of sources and combine two or more datasets
• Produce summary statistics, tables and graphs
• Keep a record of your work so it is reproducible
• Work with dates (optional)

Tutors

The course is led by Susie Robinson-Molloy and Dr Hannah Jones, both of whom have extensive experience of using Stata for data processing and analysis in research at Bristol Medical School. All the course tutors are Bristol Medical School researchers who use Stata in their own work.

Who should attend

The course is open to all, subject to the prerequisites, and is aimed at people who are just starting to manage data and run simple descriptive statistics in Stata. No previous experience of Stata is needed.

You will need Stata installed before the course starts. Version 19 is ideal, but version 14 or later will work, although older versions may behave slightly differently. University of Bristol participants are given access; external participants need to arrange their own, and students can use a free one-week short-term Stata student licence. A second screen is ideal, so you can follow the course manual and the tutor’s Stata alongside your own.

Format

The course runs online over three consecutive days, Tuesday 1 to Thursday 3 December 2026, with live morning and afternoon sessions. A course manual is emailed in advance, and materials go up on Blackboard Ultra one to two weeks beforehand. Live lectures are recorded and uploaded within 24 hours, and you keep access for five months after the course. Breakout sessions are not recorded.

Cost

The fee is £750. Check the fees and voucher packs page to see if you are eligible for a discount. Bookings close two weeks before the course starts, on Tuesday 17 November 2026.

Book a place

Organised by the Bristol Medical School Short Course Programme, University of Bristol. Full details on the course page.