2008 Summer North American Stata Users Group meeting Chicago, 24-25 July 2008

Using SPSS files in Stata

Sergiy Radyakin The World Bank

How to get the data in?

Use Stata to manipulate the data and read it in Use the data producing application to export the data in the proper format that Stata can later import Use specialized conversion software to convert to a proper format

Use another statistical package that supports both formats to make it convert the dataset
Write own conversion program in/as:
Stata (slow, portable) Mata (faster, portable) Plugin (very fast, not portable, dependent on Statas bit-width) Standalone (very fast, not portable, independent of Statas bitwidth)
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Which data formats does Stata support (as of v10)?

Stata native formats (use) ASCII data with dictionaries (insheet/infix) SAS XPORT format (fdause) Data import via ODBC, provided that a required driver is installed and configured

But, no SPSS support

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When SPSS is available:

SPSS v14 and later supports exporting data to Stata format SPSS_to_Stata_00.sbs script by Alasdair Crockett is available for earlier releases, requires both SPSS and Stata for conversion
Data Services Guides: SPSS_to_Stata Conversion Utility Guide http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/support/conversionguide.pdf

This can be automated with an .ado wrapper similar to USESAS by Dan Blanchette, which requires SAS to be installed to import data to Stata These are not true readers, since they require SPSS or SAS to be installed (with license costs, etc.)
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Specialized Conversion Software

Stat/Transfer
http://www.stattransfer.com/ $295 (New unit, Windows)

DBMS/Copy

http://www.dataflux.com/ProductServices/Products/dbms.asp $495 (New individual, Windows)

Both support command line parameters to convert in a batch-mode and thus can be wrapped for use with Stata, see e.g. STCMD by Roger Newson
(as of July 13, 2008)
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USESPSS
USESPSS is a new command for Stata to read in SPSS data (*.sav files) It is a true reader does not require any other software (other than OS Windows)

Free
Implemented as a plugin, with portions of code (e.g. file decompression) written in assembler for performance optimization Note: SPSS format documentation is not released, and only fragmented information is available in the Internet
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USESPSS Features
Reads *.sav files originating from both Windows and UNIX versions of SPSS (LoHi and HiLo byte orders) Supports compressed and non-compressed SPSS files Preserves variable and value labels

Optimizes data storage types (2-pass)

Supports long variable names Automatically renames not allowed variable names and resolves naming collisions Preserves number of decimals in numeric formats. Transfers, but does not format date/time variables
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USESPSS Syntax
usespss can be used as any other command in the command line, users .do files and .ado programs:

usespss [using] filename.sav [,clear saving(filename.dta) iff(condition) inn(condition) memory(memsize) lowmemory(memsize)]

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Memory Tradeoff
Stata and plugins share the same address space
As a consequence, plugins can read Statas data directly (if they know where it is located) and call Statas subroutines (if exposed). However, the more memory is allocated for Stata data, the less memory is available to the plugins, because the size of the address space is limited (typically 2GB on a 32-bit Windows system). In other words, plugins compete for memory between themselves and with Stata.
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Memory Tradeoff
Similarly to Stata, usespss attempts to load the whole data file into memory; this speeds up the 2-pass processing (1st pass optimization of the storage types, 2nd pass actual conversion) But, when user loads the SPSS data Stata data (if any) is discarded. So Statas memory use can be temporarily decreased within usespss.ado
It is important to do this when working with large files, otherwise the plugin will not be able to allocate enough memory to load the SPSS data file.
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Memory Use
Consider the following code: set mem 800m usespss using mydata.sav, lowmemory(10) memory(800)
Limit, e.g. 2GB

Plugin code Free memory Plugin data

Memory

Free memory

800m Stata data Stata code

time 11

10m

usespss.ado starts

Any dataset in Statas memory is cleared

Stata memory is temporarily set to a low value

Stata memory is set to a higher value

usespss.ado ends

DESSPSS
desspss is a new Stata command to describe the contents of an SPSS system *.sav file does not destroy data in the memory works much faster than
usespss using filename.sav, saving(filename.dta) describe

because no optimization/conversion is actually performed, but does not list the variable types (these are determined after optimization) saves all descriptive information in r()
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DESSPSS Example Report

. desspss using artificial.sav
DESSPSS Report ============== SPSS System file: artificial.sav Created (date): 17-Jul- 8 Created (time): 22: 4: 0 SPSS product: SPSS-X SYSTEM FILE. SPSS 5.0 MS/Windows made by DBMS/COPY File label (if present): File size (as stored on disk): 382692 bytes Data size: 381432 bytes Data stored in compressed format This file is likely to originate from a Windows platform (LoHi byte order) Number of cases (observations): 10000 Number of variables: 10 Case size: 88 bytes ---------------------------------------------------------------------Variables: GENDER AGE MARRIED EMP_STAT B_YEAR WAGE W_HOURS FULLTIME CITY_COD CITY_NAM

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Demonstration:
Embedded artificially created dataset in SPSS format:

Click on the icon opens the SPSS file in Stata if:

1. usespss is installed in Stata, and 2. file assosiation was set:
--------------------- beginning of sav_file.reg -------------------Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.sav] @="sav_auto_file" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\sav_auto_file] @="SPSS Dataset" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\sav_auto_file\shell] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\sav_auto_file\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\sav_auto_file\shell\open\command] @="\"C:\\Stata10se\\wsestata.exe\" usespss \"%1\" ---------------------- end of sav_file.reg -------------------------

Substitute with the full name of the Statas executable

Questions?

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