[Nick Cox]

#44 The introduction of meta-analysis in official Stata is not competition, but rather signals a firm long-term commitment by the company to the field, which thus includes technical support. The acknowledgments on pp.44-45 of https://www.stata.com/manuals/meta.pdf show how this introduction builds on a great deal of community-contributed work over more than 20 years. What those acknowledgments don't spell out, and no blame attaches, is that user-programmer support and maintenance for even the most important community-contributed commands has sometimes been a little uncertain, given personal changes of various kinds, including death (alas), retirement, moving to other fields, being too busy, and so on and so forth. Positively, there is also a long history of programmers handing on the baton to others. Naturally users can continue with whatever commands they want to employ.

This is a personal interpretation, and not advertising copy!

[Suhail Doi]

#46 Agree with you on that point, my colleague sadly passed away in mid 2017 and development of our MetaXL software (www.epigear.com) has become considerably challenging. I am also grateful for the user developed commands that currently exist so certainly Stata (all versions) still has robust options in this area.

[Tauseef Ahmad Khan]

I would like to add to Nick Cox on the question raised by Suhail Doi regarding the new meta commands. Regarding the other commands on meta-analsyis, I would concur with Nick Cox that many of those programmes were maintained by individuals and sometimes it would take ages for them to be updated.

It is great that Stata has produced this suite and now we can be confident that it will be supported and updated going forward. I have been reading the meta documentation in detail, have tested it for a couple of weeks and am currently running an analysis for publication. I can confirm that the new meta suite of commands is very user friendly and contains almost all of the functions that would be needed by someone running a meta-analysis. There are probably only a few things I could do with the flexibility of admetan, metan etc than in meta suite itself; for 95% of people it is easier to use, graphics are splendid and the saved results are detailed. I really like the subgroup analysis implementation. The documentation is also very well written; it is clear and gives a good introduction to meta-analysis and the discusses some recent advances in this area. Good work.

There are a couple of things that can improve this suite further, I will be giving my feedback to Stata about these.

[Mike Murphy]

Mike Murphy
By dpi settings are you referring to dots per inch or something else? If dots per inch, isn't that something that is handled by the printer driver?

Yes, dots per inch, though for monitor settings. I'm grousing (along with colleagues) because Stata auto-adjusts font sizes when I switch between laptop and external monitors, resulting in unreadable output/other windows. Per tech support, this is something that can only be currently resolved with a workaround: manually reloading preference sets or signing out/in to Windows (!). They described fixing this as a "feature" that they hope to add to a future update/release.

[justine gosling]

Great that with STATA 16 you can now upload SPSS data, however I'm not sure how to weight the data on STATA as SPSS has different commands. I've imported UNICEF Malawi children's MICS data but now can't work out how to weigh it before analysis. Can anyone help? Many thanks

[Marcos Almeida]

If by "how to weight" you mean preparing for a survey data analysis, just type:

help svyset

[justine gosling]

Thank you Marcos, I've tried that but its still not the same from SPSS to STATA I think. There is a 'chweight' variable which is the children's weight but I can't see how that fits into the command.

[Bruce Weaver]

Hello Justine. Do you have SPSS code for this? If so, it might help if you posted it here (using code delimiters as described in the FAQ). Some members of this forum use (or have used) both SPSS and Stata, and seeing the SPSS code may help someone work out what needs to be done in Stata. HTH.

PS- Your question really ought to have been posted as a new thread with an informative subject line!

[Barry DeCicco]

If using Python 3 through Anaconda

python:
import os os.environ['QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH'] = "Your\\path\\to\\Anaconda3\\Library\\plugins"
end

That's not working for me - I get the same error after running that.

[Barry DeCicco]

That's not working for me - I get the same error after running that.

Note that there 'import os' and 'os.environ...........' need to be on separate lines.

[David Fisher]

Suhail Doi Nick Cox RE comments #44 to #48:

Sorry, I must have missed these comments over the summer holidays!

As the author of a user-written meta-analysis command (admetan), I was a little taken aback by the appearance of the Stata 16 module, although I must admit that I was notified by StataCorp of their intentions in advance. Ultimately though, I think Nick and Tauseef have it right: many users just want a module that does the basics well, and with reliable support. Having arrived at that conclusion, myself and my collaborators are aiming to continue developing our user-written programs, but with perhaps more of a focus on filling in the gaps, e.g. with alternative models such as those implemented in MetaXL as Suhail mentions, and on greater flexibility e.g. in forest plots. I think there is sufficient room in the Stata universe for the official module and for user-written packages. So, watch this space!

(P.S. thankyou Suhail for your defence of admetan and my condolences regarding your erstwhile colleague.)

[Suhail Doi]

David Fisher

Thanks David for your thoughts on this release and I agree with you that these are packages for different audiences. Yes indeed, Jan's loss was tragic (he wanted to change the world of epidemiological modelling and put his software company with all its resources behind MetaXL) but life got in the way ........

[Dave Airey]

Finally installed Stata 16. So much added. Thanks to Stata Corp for a valuable addition to the commercial marketplace. Just tried out frames to collect simulation results... that's useful. Also liking the dark theme.

[Abubakari Yakubu]

Hello, I feel great to be part of this forum everyone.
Please can someone assist me a code in STATA to output EFA and CFA tables. I will appreciate and explanation of the 'putdocx' command.

[Marcos Almeida]

Welcome to the Stata Forum / Statalist,

Please start a new thread on this specific topic. I strongly recommend to take a look at the FAQ. There you'll find how to start a new topic, share data and command, upload pictures, etc.