R: Write 'mitml' objects to SPSS compatible format

write.mitmlSPSS {mitml} | R Documentation

## Write `mitml` objects to SPSS compatible format

### Description

Saves objects of class `mitml` as a text and a syntax file which can be processed by the statistical software SPSS (IBM Corp., 2013).

### Usage

    write.mitmlSPSS(x, filename, sep="\t", dec=".", na.value=-999, syntax=TRUE,
      locale=NULL)

### Arguments

`x` | An object of class `mitml` or `mitml.list` as produced by `panImpute`, `jomoImpute`, `mitmlComplete`, or similar).
`filename` | Basic file name of the data and syntax files, to be specified without file extension.
`sep` | The field separator.
`dec` | The decimal separator.
`na.value` | A numeric value coding the missing data in the resulting data file.
`syntax` | A logical flag indicating if an SPSS syntax file should be generated. This file contains instructions for SPSS for reading in the data file. Default is to `TRUE`.
`locale` | (optional) A character string specifying the localization to be used in SPSS (e.g., `"en_US"`, `"de_DE"`). This argument may be specified if SPSS reads the data incorrectly due to conflicting locale settings.

### Details

Multiply imputed data sets in SPSS are contained in a single file, in which an `Imputation_` variable separates the original data and the various imputed data sets. During export, factors are converted to numeric, whereas character variables are left "as is".

By default, `write.mitmlSPSS` generates a raw text file containing the data, along with a syntax file containing instructions for SPSS. This syntax file mimics SPSS's functionality to read text files but circumvents certain problems that may occur when using the GUI. In order to read in the data, the syntax file must be opened and executed using SPSS. The syntax file may be altered manually if problems occur, for example, if the file path of the data file is not correctly represented in the syntax.

Alternatively, `write.mitmlSAV` may be used for exporting directly to the SPSS native `.sav` format. However, this may offer less control over the data format.

### Value

None (invisible `NULL`).

### Author(s)

Simon Grund

### References

IBM Corp. (2013). IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp

### See Also

`panImpute`, `jomoImpute`, `mitmlComplete`, `write.mitmlSAV`

### Examples

    data(studentratings)

    fml <- ReadDis + SES ~ ReadAchiev + (1|ID)
    imp <- panImpute(studentratings, formula=fml, n.burn=1000, n.iter=100, m=5)

    # write data file and SPSS syntax
    write.mitmlSPSS(imp, filename="imputation", sep="\t", dec=".", na.value=-999,
    locale="en_US")

[Package mitml version 0.3-5 Index]