The National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), implemented by SALDRU on behalf of the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, hosted a 5-day Panel Data Course from 16 – 20 July at UCT’s School of Economics.
The course provided an introduction to analysing the NIDS Wave 1-4 data using Stata. More specifically, the techniques used in the analysis of longitudinal household survey data (i.e. panel data) were explored. Accordingly, some of the topics covered over the 5 days included panel data structure, statistics and regression analysis; transitions over time; weighting, and differential attrition.
The course was designed for people with honours-level econometrics and prior experience using Stata to analyse cross-sectional household survey data. It was attended by 17 researchers, lecturers, students and data specialists from across South Africa. According to many of the attendees, the skills that they developed during the course will prove useful for their future research endeavours – not only those using NIDS, but those using other data sources as well.