STATA Programs for Using the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) to Construct Files for Statistical Analysis

Abstract

The Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) provides a common structure for storing and sharing historical demographic data. The structure also facilitates the construction of different open-access software to extract information from these tables and construct new variables. The article Using the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) to Construct Files for Analysis (Quaranta 2015) presented a series of concepts and programs that allow the user to construct a rectangular episodes file for longitudinal statistical analysis using data stored in the IDS. The current article discusses, in detail, each of these programs, describing their technicalities, structure and syntax, and also explaining how they can be used.