Analysing PIAAC Data with Stata

Abstract

This chapter explains the basics of analysing data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) with Stata. It describes how to import the PIAAC datasets into Stata, gives an overview of the different categories of variables available in these datasets, and mentions a number of features of some types of variables about which users should be aware. The different types of missing values are explained. Routines frequently used with PIAAC datasets are presented using examples. Furthermore, the chapter is devoted to the use of plausible values variables and to the computation of imputation errors and sampling errors. In particular, it presents repest, a Stata ado file written to facilitate the analysis of international skills assessments, such as PIAAC.Stata is an integrated statistical analysis package designed for research professionals. It is particularly well suited for analysing the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey (OECD 2013(OECD , 2016b. Among existing statistical software packages, Stata stands out as it is designed to operate on one dataset at a time, using a dataset that has been previously loaded in memory. With a one-dataset survey such as PIAAC, it brings a simplicity of use and computation speeds difficult to find elsewhere. Moreover, Stata users can benefit from repest, a Stata ado file developed at the OECD and designed to facilitate the analysis of international skills assessments.Stata works as a command-line-driven software. It also includes a graphic user interface. Commands can be run-one command at a time-from a prompt located below the results window. This makes the preliminary exploration of a dataset both simple and interactive, in particular, because another window is dedicated to displaying the list of all variables. Commands can be regrouped and saved in

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“…All analyses are conducted using STATA (StataCorp 2019). The repest command estimates a selected model over both the plausible values and the replicate weights and report (average) coefficients and standard errors from the generated distributions (Keslair 2020).…”

Non-cognitive skills and immigrant-native inequalities in the labor market in Europe

“…See Supplementary Table 1 for a list of all variables and their descriptions used in analyses. To account for weighted replicate samples in PIAAC international data and imputation error in plausible values, we used STATA module repest command in STATA developed by OECD (Keslair, 2020).…”

Skill deficits among foreign-educated immigrants: Evidence from the U.S. PIAAC

“…To reduce the burden of the survey, PIAAC respondents take different portions of the tests and are subsequently assigned ten "plausible values" to represent their true scores [27]. Both the "piaactools" [28] and "repest" [29] programs for STATA were used to calculate group means and standard errors from these plausible values.…”