I am currently working on the effects of maternal education on child mortality with cross-sectional data. I got data sets for 2008, 2010 and 2014. I am thinking of doing a robustness checks and I received some advice and I am not sure whether it is valid or how it works on stata. I was told to merge the data sets, ie 2010 and 2014, then create a year dummy variable (i.year), then include the year dummy variable and simply run the regressions that I had for my project.

Also something I am concerned is that do the respondents have to be the same individuals? And what is the difference between running the regression separately in 2010 and 2014 and the method above? Thanks in advance!