Richard Williams
>
> >There is a potential trap with the approach of 'saving as'
> a tab delimited
> >file in SPSS and importing into Stata using 'insheet using
> filename'
> >
> >If there is a missing value (no entry of a number) in any of the
> >observations for a numeric variable in SPSS, SPSS outputs a space
> >character in the saved tab-delimited file. When the file
> is read by Stata
> >via 'insheet using filename', the space character converts
> the numeric
> >variable into a string variable and doing the -summ var-
> command in Stata
> >says that there are zero observations for this variable.
> This is because
> >it is a string variable. I think that there is no need for
> SPSS to output
> >a space character, but that is the way it is. Deleting the space
> >character(s) in the tab-delimited file resolves the
> problem, but it is
> >only a workaround. This occurs with Stata7 and Stata8.
> >
> >Anothe workaround in Stata is to use
> >-destring, replace-
>
> I use Stat Transfer so I have not encountered this problem.
> But, I imagine
> a workaround in SPSS would be to first recode your missing
> values, e.g.
> have something like RECODE VARNAME (SYSMIS = 999999).
That's evidently an alternative.
No reason, however, to change your SPSS
data -- in a way you presumably will need to reverse --
when there appears to be a simple official
Stata fix for the problem on Stata entry.
Nick
[email protected]
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