Read SPSS file into R

Question

Hi All,

Probably a basic answer. I am trying to learn R and want to bring in an SPSS file, which I can open in SPSS.

I have tried using read.spss from foreign and spss.get from Hmisc. Both error messages are the same.

Here is my code:

## install.packages("Hmisc")
library(foreign)


## change the working directory
getwd()
setwd('C:/Documents and Settings/BTIBERT/Desktop/')

## load in the file
## ?read.spss
asq <- read.spss('ASQ2010.sav', to.data.frame=T)

And the resulting error:

Error in read.spss("ASQ2010.sav", to.data.frame = T) : 
  error reading system-file header
In addition: Warning message:
In read.spss("ASQ2010.sav", to.data.frame = T) :
  ASQ2010.sav: position 0: character `\000' (

Also, I tried saving out the SPSS file as a SPSS 7 .sav file (was previously using SPSS 18).

Warning messages:
1: In read.spss("ASQ2010_test.sav", to.data.frame = T) :
  ASQ2010_test.sav: Unrecognized record type 7, subtype 14 encountered in system file
2: In read.spss("ASQ2010_test.sav", to.data.frame = T) :
  ASQ2010_test.sav: Unrecognized record type 7, subtype 18 encountered in system file

Any help will be much appreciated.

Brock

Answer 1

It looks like the R read.spss implementation is incomplete or broken. R2.10.1 does better than R2.8.1, however. It appears that R gets upset about custom attributes in a sav file even with 2.10.1 (The latest I have). R also may not understand the character encoding field in the file, and in particular it probably does not work with SPSS Unicode files.

You might try opening the file in SPSS, deleting any custom attributes, and resaving the file. You can see whether there are custom attributes with the SPSS command

display attributes.

If so, delete them (see VARIABLE ATTRIBUTE and DATAFILE ATTRIBUTE commands), and try again.

HTH, Jon Peck

Answer 2

If you have access to SPSS, save file as .csv, hence import it with read.csv or read.table. I can't recall any problem with .sav file importing. So far it was working like a charm both with read.spss and spss.get. I reckon that spss.get will not give different results, since it depends on foreign::read.spss

Can you provide some info on SPSS/R/Hmisc/foreign version?

Answer 3

1)

I've found the program, stat-transfer, useful for importing spss and stata files into R.

It resolves the issue you mention by converting spss to R dataset. Also very useful for subsetting super large datasets into smaller portions consumable by R. Not free, but a very useful tool for working with datasets from different programs -- especially if you don't have access to them.

2)

Memisc package also has an spss function worth trying.