Ellen Seljan - Understanding Political Science Statistics Using Stata: A Manual with Exercises

This manual walks students through the procedures for analysis in Stata and provides exercises that go hand-in-hand with online data sets. The manual complements the textbook, Understanding Political Science Statistics: Observations and Expectations in Political Analysis, by Peter Galderisi, making it easy to use alongside the book in a course or as a stand-alone guide to using Stata. Ellen C. Seljan demonstrates how to run commands in Stata for different kinds of research questions and shows the results of the analyses, using lots of annotated screenshots from Stata version 12 (but compatible with all versions, including Stata Small). Students will be guided through standard processes replete with examples and exercises to ready them for future work in political science research.

The diverse group of data sets provided include subsamples of both the 2008 and 2012 American National Election Studies, a Eurobarometer survey, single-year and longitudinal congressional district files, the 2012 Comparative Congressional Election Study, and a comparative, crossnational country file. Versions with reduced case numbers and variables are also included that are compatible with Stata Small.

This manual (and a parallel SPSS manual) are available as stand-alone products or packaged with the textbook Understanding Political Science Statistics, and data sets are available at www.routledge.com/cw/galderisi.

Ellen C. Seljan is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lewis & Clark College.

Peter Galderisi has taught political science methods and statistics for more than three decades, and is currently a lecturer and local internship director in the Political Science Department at the University of California, San Diego. Previously, Galderisi was a Professor or Visiting Professor at Utah State, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and Cal State Fullerton. He specializes in U.S. political parties, campaigns and elections, American political development, interest groups, and election law.

A Manual with Exercises

Ellen C. Seljan with Peter Galderisi

First published 2015 by Routledge

Published 2016 by Routledge

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711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

First issued in hardback 2016

Copyright 2015 Taylor & Francis.

The right of Ellen C. Seljan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Seljan, Ellen C.

Understanding political science statistics using stata : a manual with exercises / Ellen C. Seljan with Peter Galderisi.

pages cm

1. Stata. 2. Political statistics. 3. StatisticsComputer programs. I. Galderisi, Peter F. II. Title.

JA71.7.S45 2015

320.0285555dc23

2014034873

ISBN 978-1-13885-068-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-138-14636-5 (hbk)

Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Stata software is developed and owned by Statacorp: http://www.stata.com/.

The 2008 and 2012 National Election data were made available through the American National Election Studies Organization.

The American National Election Studies (ANES; http://www.election-studies.org). The ANES 2008 Time Series Study [data set]. Stanford University and the University of Michigan [producers]. These materials are based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants SES-0535334, SES-0720428, SES-0840550, and SES-0651271; Stanford University; and the University of Michigan.

The American National Election Studies (ANES; http://www.election-studies.org). The ANES 2012 Time Series Study [data set]. Stanford University and the University of Michigan [producers]. These materials are based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants SES-0937727 and SES-0937715, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations.

The 2008 and 20082012 congressional district files contain information made available from the following:

The Daily Kos (originally found in the Swing State Project) for results for pre- and post-redistricted estimates of presidential votes within each district: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/19/1163009/-Daily-Kos-Elections-presidential-results-by-congressional-district-for-the-20122008-elections.

The Federal Election Commission (http://www.fec.gov) for information on voting and campaign finances.

Keith Poole (University of Georgia) for party unity and DW-Nominate scores.

George C. Edwards III (Texas A&M) for Presidential Support scores.

The American Conservative Union (ACU; http://www.conservative.org) for ideology scores and seniority data.

The U.S. Census Bureau for 2007, 2010, and 2012 estimates of demographic factors. These data were compiled using their FactFinder program with the American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates (http://www.census.gov/acs/www).

The Cook Political Report and POLIDATA for the Cook PVI scores.

The Clerk of the U.S. House (http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/) for verification of voting data.

Lindsay Nielson, David Todd, Jordan Hsu, and Soren Nelson (University of California San Diego) for assistance with updating these data.

Eurobarometer 69:2, National and European Identity, European Elections, European Values, and Climate Change, MarchMay 2008.

Permission provided by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Eurostat, http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb69/eb69_annexes.pdf, European Communities, 2008.

CCES2012: 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey.

Permission provided by the Principal Investigators of the Comparative Congressional Election Study (CCES) study. Stephen Ansolabehere, 2012, CCES Common Content, 2012, http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/21447 CCES [Distributor] V2 [Version].

CROSSNAT

Data and permissions provided by the following:

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (http://www.idea.int/uid/).

The World Bank.

The Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom (http://www.heritage.org/index/). Terry Miller, Anthony B. Kim, and Kim R. Holmes, Index of Economic Freedom (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation and Dow Jones & Company, 2014), http://www.heritage.org/index.

Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org).