Creating pre- and posttest visualizations with Stata, Excel, and Tableau—a dynamic approach

Pre- and posttest visualizations are powerful—they can tell a story of change or lack of change within a population and help researchers inform their insights into humanity and the surrounding environment. Stata is very useful for gathering insights from pre- and posttests, and in conjunction with Excel and Tableau, one has the capacity to create pre- and posttest visualizations that are efficient and visually appealing. To create these visualizations, I will discuss a multistep method. The use of Stata functions, such as asdoc asdoc asdoc asdoc and reshape reshape reshape reshape, will be a critical component to the data analysis process. To accompany this, data manipulation and data functions, such as if-then statements, will be used in Excel from Stata output to generate a dataset that can be imported into the Tableau interface. And with the Tableau interface, visualizations can be created that can provide insights into sample sizes, statistical significance, and change all in one view.