importsav

Program to convert SPSS file to Stata (requires R)

importsav converts SPSS file to Stata with the help of R packages--haven, foreign and bit64. Thus, in order to use importsav, you need to install R on your system first. But after that, there is no need of running R at all.

The essential idea underlying importsav is not to interrupt your workflow within Stata. With this command, you don’t need to escape Stata for data conversion. importsav will automatically write and execute R code for you.

This is how importsav works: if you typed the command properly, importsav stores file name(s) and path in Stata’s macros, writes R code using information contained in those macros and then sends that R code to R console through Stata’s shell command.

importsav depends on haven and foreign to support non-English labels. Since foreign truncates variable labels exceeding a certain length, by default importsav tries haven first and then foreign only if haven didn’t work. But using a subcommand importsav foreign, it is also possible to try foreign first regardless of the malfunction of haven.

For this program to work, hence, importsav must ascertain location of R on your system. To identify where R is installed, the program depends on three different algorithms: (1) using SSC package whereis; (2) searching expected directories similar to github package rcall’s behavior; (3) chekcing the PATH environment variable. If all three fail to find location of R, importsav will cease to proceed. In this case, you can set the R path manually using the whereis command.

An important limitation of importsav is that it is not able to convert a file with non-English characters in path. The source of this problem lies in R itself and currently there is no credible solution. You should check your current working directory and filename(s).

Known issue(s)

• (Windows) If importsav hangs after invoking R console within the shell, please re-run Stata as Administrator.

Installation

You can install the latest version of importsav using either Stata’s net install command or user-written package github.

net from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jh-min/importsav/master
github install jh-min/importsav

Current version of importsav is not available on SSC archive yet, it will be soon updated.

Syntax

importsav filename1 [ filename2 ] [, options]
importsav [ foreign | haven ] filename1 [ filename2 ] [, options]

where filename2 will be automatically set identical to filename1 if omitted.

otpions	Description
encoding(string)	set which encoding to be used when reading SPSS file via haven
reencode(string)	set which encoding to be used when reading SPSS file via foreign
unicode(string)	set which encoding to be used when translating from extended ASCII after foreign
compress(#)	set the reference size for compression (unit: megabyte, default value: 256)
offdefault	force importsav not to compress the data

If encoding(string) is set, importsav will set option encoding of R function haven::read_sav using that string. If you specify NULL or null, it is identical not to use encoding(string)

If reencode(string) is set, importsav will set option reencode of R function foreign::read.spss using that string; here, reencode(string) will be automatically set identical to encoding(string) if omitted. If you don’t want this fallback behaviour, specify NA or na in reencode(string).

If unicode(string) is set and your version of Stata is newer than 13, importsav will execute unicode translate using that string after R package foreign converted your data; here, unicode(string) will be automatically set identical to reencode(string) if omitted. If you don’t want this fallback behaviour, specify off in unicode(string).

By default, importsav compresses your data when current file size is larger than 256MB. You can manually adjust that criterion via compress(#). If offdefault is set, the data will not be compressed in any cases.

Requirements

You should install R on your system. If you have installed R on the location other than the default, you should add the location of R to whereis or system environment variable. In the latter case, say path to R.exe is D:\R-3.6.2\bin\R.exe, you need to add either D:\R-3.6.2 to R_HOME environment variable (Windows-only) or D:\R-3.6.2\bin\R.exe to PATH environment variable.

Examples

importsav dataname.sav

With this command, you will get dataname.dta from dataname.sav.

importsav spssfile statafile , e("EUC-KR")

With this command, you will get statafile.dta from spssfile.sav using encoding EUC-KR to read SPSS file.

importsav "spss file" statafile.dta , c(100)

With this command, you will get statafile.dta from spss file.sav and your data will be compressed if the file size is larger than 100MB.

importsav spssfile "C:\Data\stata file" , off

With this command, you will get stata file.dta in C:\Data from spssfile.sav in the current working directory and your data will not be compressed even if the file size is larger than 256MB.

importsav "C:\Data\spss file" "stata file" , c(100) off

With this command, you will get stata file.dta in the current working directory from spss file.sav in C:\Data and your data will not be compressed even if the file size is larger than 100MB.

importsav foreign "spss data" stata_data

With this command, you will get stata_data.dta from spss data.sav using R package foreign.

Author

JeongHoon Min, Sogang University, plus1@sogang.ac.kr

Acknowledgement

This program owes a lot to importspss by Gabriel Rossman, whereis by Germán Rodríguez and rcall by E. F. Haghish. The author is grateful for their informative programs.