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Jeroen Ooms

2008-Aug-01 15:17 UTC

[Rd] importing explicitly declared missing values in read.spss (foreign)

There is a problem when importing an spss-file containing explicitly declared
missing values in R using the read.spss function from the foreign package.
I'm not sure these problems are the same in every version of spss, I am
using the latest version 16.0.2.

I included  http://www.nabble.com/file/p18776776/missingdata.sav
missingdata.sav  and  http://www.nabble.com/file/p18776776/frequencies.jpg
frequencies.jpg  as an example. The data contains 3 types of missing data: 2
are explicitly declared as a missing-value ('8' = NA and '9' =
NAP), the
third type are the system missings. When this file is imported in R, only
the system missings are recognized as missing values, the others are just
imported as levels in the nominal case, and as (labeled) real values 8 and 9
in the continuous case. There are also no attributes in the object returned
by read.spss that contain information about which values/levels are the
missing values; their missingness seems to be completely ignored by the
function.

Is there some way or other function to be able to import spss files, with an
option that replaces all missing values with <NA>'s in R? Of course
this
comes with the trade-off of losing the meaning of the missingness when there
are multiple types of missingness, but I think this is far less harmfull
than treating all missing values as normal values. 

[code]> mydata <- read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
> to.data.frame=T)Warning messages:
1: In read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
to.data.frame T) :
  c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav: File-indicated character
representation code (1252) looks like a Windows codepage
2: In read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
to.data.frame T) :
  c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav: Unrecognized record type 7,
subtype 16 encountered in system file
3: In read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
to.data.frame T) :
  c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav: Unrecognized record type 7,
subtype 20 encountered in system file
> mydata   SUBJECT CATEGORI CONTINUO
1        1      yes     3.11
2        2      yes     2.10
3        3      yes     5.34
4        4      yes     1.54
5        5      yes     3.89
6        6       no     2.98
7        7       no     4.53
8        8       no     1.98
9        9       no     3.68
10      10       no     2.94
11      11       NA     8.00
12      12       NA     8.00
13      13       NA     8.00
14      14       NA     8.00
15      15       NA     8.00
16      16      NAP     9.00
17      17      NAP     9.00
18      18      NAP     9.00
19      19      NAP     9.00
20      20      NAP     9.00
21      21     <NA>       NA
22      22     <NA>       NA
23      23     <NA>       NA
24      24     <NA>       NA
25      25     <NA>       NA
> is.na(mydata$CONTINUO) [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE 
TRUE
> is.na(mydata$CATEGORI) [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE 
TRUE
> summary(mydata)    SUBJECT   CATEGORI    CONTINUO    
 Min.   : 1   yes :5   Min.   :1.540  
 1st Qu.: 7   no  :5   1st Qu.:3.078  
 Median :13   NA  :5   Median :6.670  
 Mean   :13   NAP :5   Mean   :5.854  
 3rd Qu.:19   NA's:5   3rd Qu.:8.250  
 Max.   :25            Max.   :9.000  
                       NA's   :5.000  
[/code]


-- 
View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/importing-explicitly-declared-missing-values-in-read.spss-%28foreign%29-tp18776776p18776776.html
Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Prof Brian Ripley

2008-Aug-04 05:39 UTC

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[Rd] importing explicitly declared missing values in read.spss (foreign)

>From the messages you get I do not believe this is a recent version of read.spss (message 2 no longer appears), and you haven't followed the 
posting guide and told us.  However, your message 3 does still appear, and 
that might be significant.

A small anount of googling came up with

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-April/159342.html

and I guess this is the same issue.  A quick look at the code for 
read.spss() suggests that the information on user-defined missing values 
is being read in, and that there are yet more possible types of 
missingness (only some of which I understand).  So what is needed is to 
return that info to the R user: now we have an example at least something 
shold be possible.

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
>
> There is a problem when importing an spss-file containing explicitly
declared
> missing values in R using the read.spss function from the foreign package.
> I'm not sure these problems are the same in every version of spss, I am
> using the latest version 16.0.2.
>
> I included  http://www.nabble.com/file/p18776776/missingdata.sav
> missingdata.sav  and  http://www.nabble.com/file/p18776776/frequencies.jpg
> frequencies.jpg  as an example. The data contains 3 types of missing data:
2
> are explicitly declared as a missing-value ('8' = NA and
'9' = NAP), the
> third type are the system missings. When this file is imported in R, only
> the system missings are recognized as missing values, the others are just
> imported as levels in the nominal case, and as (labeled) real values 8 and
9
> in the continuous case. There are also no attributes in the object returned
> by read.spss that contain information about which values/levels are the
> missing values; their missingness seems to be completely ignored by the
> function.
>
> Is there some way or other function to be able to import spss files, with
an
> option that replaces all missing values with <NA>'s in R? Of
course this
> comes with the trade-off of losing the meaning of the missingness when
there
> are multiple types of missingness, but I think this is far less harmfull
> than treating all missing values as normal values.
If the missingness information were returned others are likely to 
disagree, especially for factors.  All that is 'harmfull' is that you
are
not told that value labels NA and NAP were to be regarded as 'missing'
in
SPSS.  We've no idea whether if would be a more or less egregious choice 
to map them to R's NA, and certainly are not in a position to assert
'far
less harmfull' in general.

> [code]
>> mydata <-
read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
>> to.data.frame=T)
> Warning messages:
> 1: In read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
to.data.frame > T) :
>  c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav: File-indicated character
> representation code (1252) looks like a Windows codepage
> 2: In read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
to.data.frame > T) :
>  c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav: Unrecognized record type 7,
> subtype 16 encountered in system file
> 3: In read.spss("c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav",
to.data.frame > T) :
>  c:/users/jeroen/desktop/missingdata.sav: Unrecognized record type 7,
> subtype 20 encountered in system file
>
>> mydata
>   SUBJECT CATEGORI CONTINUO
> 1        1      yes     3.11
> 2        2      yes     2.10
> 3        3      yes     5.34
> 4        4      yes     1.54
> 5        5      yes     3.89
> 6        6       no     2.98
> 7        7       no     4.53
> 8        8       no     1.98
> 9        9       no     3.68
> 10      10       no     2.94
> 11      11       NA     8.00
> 12      12       NA     8.00
> 13      13       NA     8.00
> 14      14       NA     8.00
> 15      15       NA     8.00
> 16      16      NAP     9.00
> 17      17      NAP     9.00
> 18      18      NAP     9.00
> 19      19      NAP     9.00
> 20      20      NAP     9.00
> 21      21     <NA>       NA
> 22      22     <NA>       NA
> 23      23     <NA>       NA
> 24      24     <NA>       NA
> 25      25     <NA>       NA
>
>> is.na(mydata$CONTINUO)
> [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
> FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE
> TRUE
>
>> is.na(mydata$CATEGORI)
> [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
> FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE
> TRUE
>
>> summary(mydata)
>    SUBJECT   CATEGORI    CONTINUO
> Min.   : 1   yes :5   Min.   :1.540
> 1st Qu.: 7   no  :5   1st Qu.:3.078
> Median :13   NA  :5   Median :6.670
> Mean   :13   NAP :5   Mean   :5.854
> 3rd Qu.:19   NA's:5   3rd Qu.:8.250
> Max.   :25            Max.   :9.000
>                       NA's   :5.000
> [/code]
>
>
> -- 
> View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/importing-explicitly-declared-missing-values-in-read.spss-%28foreign%29-tp18776776p18776776.html
> Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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