STATA 11 for Windows SAMPLE SESSION - Food Security Group ...

Stata 11 Sample Session Section 1 - Basic functions: Files, Descriptives, Data Transformations
Data files and the working
file
Working Directory
The cd command
Open your Stata software. If you have not read or
completed Section 0, please do so now to clarify the
concept of the Command Window, the Review Window
the Results Window, the Do-file Editor and the Viewer.
Data from questionnaires that has been entered into Stata
are stored in what are called data files. If we want to work
with a set of data, we must open the corresponding data
file so that it is available to the program.
The working directory is the directory where your data
files are stored. You can use the cd command to change
to the directory where you have placed the data files you
want to use.
In the Command Window type:
cd "name of working directory"
Changing to the directory where the files are located
eliminates the need to include the directory name in the
do-file that we will be creating. If the directory you are
changing to has spaces, the directory must be enclosed in
quotes. Example of a directory name with spaces:
“C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\data”
You can also set the working directory through the menus.
From the menus select File, Change Working
Directory. A dialog box opens in Browse mode. Find
the directory that you want to work in and then click on
Ok.
In the Results window the cd command has been executed.
We can copy that command to place it in our do-file so
that if we share our do-file with another person, the
command can be modified to fit the directory structure that
person is using. Example:
cd “C:\Documents and Settings\My
Documents\StataTraining\data”
When a data file is opened, it is loaded from the disk into
memory (the computer's "RAM"), making it the working
file. This means that the data from this file is now
available for you to use. Let's start with the data for Table
IA: Household Member Characteristics. The data file that
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