Group photograph of participants
The Department of Economics, University of Ghana, in collaboration with the University of Michigan and the University of Cape Town, has organised a two-week training programme on the use of Stata, a leading software for econometric and statistical analysis. This is the third successive year the course has been run.
The course was attended by 25 participants and facilitated by nine resource persons. The participants were mainly PhD students, as well as from government institutions, i.e. the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, and the National Petroleum Authority (NPA).
The training focused on data management with Stata, and the analysis of survey and time series datasets with the software. Participants were introduced to the rudiments of Stata, including the use of the software to analyse datasets such as those from the Ghana Living Standards Surveys (GLSS) and the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys (GDHS). Participants were also introduced to the techniques of basic regression analysis and binary regression estimation, using Stata.
The instructors for the training programme comprised researchers and academics from the University of Ghana, University of Cape Town and the University of Cape Coast. Ms. Abena Oduro, Dr. Louis Boakye-Yiadom, Dr. William Baah-Boateng, and Dr. Nkechi Owoo, all of the Department of Economics constituted the team of instructors from the University of Ghana.
Through funding from the University of Michigan, each participant received a license for the latest version of the software (Stata 14). Participants evaluated the course as excellent in particular, the knowledge they had gained. They were optimistic that the knowledge acquired will significantly enhance their research capabilities.
