SDA Tutorial
Finding Variables
Running SDA
Recoding
Using Filters
Multiple Variables
Completed Tutorial

Download Report

SDA stands for Survey Documentation and Analysis.  SDA is a set of programs for the documentation and Web-based analysis of survey data. There are also procedures for creating customized subsets of datasets. This set of programs is developed and maintained by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. CSM also develops the CASES software package. 

SDA has several features that provide users several advantages over other statistical software packages.

SDA is easy to learn and use, involving completing and submitting forms. SDA is fast. SDA is web based and is therefore widely available worldwide, wherever there is web access.

There are some limitations, however. For example, while users may easily recode individual variables, they cannot combine measures. For example, a continuous measure like respondent age can be recoded into discrete, mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. But, two variables like "time spent speaking on the telephone" and "time spent watching television" cannot be added together (variable A plus variable B).

What Will I learn from the Tutorial?

This tutorial will demonstrate some of the data manipulation and analysis features of SDA that are typically used for writing research reports. For example, you will learn how to calculate summary statistics such as averages as well as crosstabulations. You will also learn how to recode variables to suit your research interests.

The data used for this tutorial come from the General Social Survey (GSS) and concern time spent using the Internet and demographic characteristics.  

The tutorial is divided into two parts.  In the first part, will be shown how to replicate the results in a short paper written by Dr. John Robinson.  In the second part, you will replicate the remainder of the results from this paper without explicit guidance.

To get going:

• Download and print and read the short research report "Estimated Internet Usage Differences by Basic GSS Demographics." This is an Adobe Acrobat "pdf" file.
• Work through the following six web pages to replicate a portion of the results in the paper.
• Work on your own to replicate the remainder of the results to complete the tutorial.

Pay particular attention to the table in this report--the tutorial will demonstrate how the results in this table were produced
 

[D/L Report] [BEGIN] [Find Variables] [Run SDA] [Recoding] [Filters] [Multiple Vars.] [End Tutorial]