basicSPSStranslationFunctions: Basic SPSS translation functions

Description

Basic functons to make working with R easier for SPSS users: getData and getDat provide an easy way to load SPSS datafiles, and exportToSPSS to write to a datafile and syntax file that SPSS can import; filterBy and useAll allow easy temporary filtering of rows from the dataframe; mediaan and modus compute the median and mode of ordinal or numeric data.

Usage

getData(filename = NULL, file = NULL, errorMessage = "[defaultErrorMessage]", applyRioLabels = TRUE, use.value.labels = FALSE, to.data.frame = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE, silent=FALSE, ...) 
getDat(..., dfName = "dat", backup = TRUE)
exportToSPSS(dat, savfile = NULL, datafile = NULL, codefile = NULL, fileEncoding = "UTF-8", newLinesInString = " |n| ") 
filterBy(dat, expression, replaceOriginalDataframe = TRUE, envir = parent.frame()) 
useAll(dat, replaceFilteredDataframe = TRUE)
mediaan(vector)
modus(vector)

Arguments

filename, file

It is possible to specify a path and filename to load here. If not specified, the default R file selection dialogue is shown. file is still available for backward compatibility but will eventually be phased out.

errorMessage

The error message that is shown if the file does not exist or does not have the right extension; "[defaultErrorMessage]" is replaced with a default error message (and can be included in longer messages).

applyRioLabels

Whether to apply the labels supplied by Rio. This will make variables that has value labels into factors.

use.value.labels

Only useful when reading from SPSS files: whether to read variables with value labels as factors (TRUE) or numeric vectors (FALSE).

to.data.frame

Only useful when reading from SPSS files: whether to return a dataframe or not.

stringsAsFactors

Whether to read strings as strings (FALSE) or factors (TRUE).

silent

Whether to suppress potentially useful information.

...

Additional options, passed on to the function used to import the data (which depends on the extension of the file).

dfName

The name of the dataframe to create in the parent environment.

backup

Whether to backup an object with name dfName, if one already exists in the parent environment.

dat

Dataframe to process: for filterBy, dataframe to filter rows from; for useAll, dataframe to restore ('unfilter').

datafile

The name of the data file, a comma separated values file that can be read into SPSS by using the code file.

codefile

The name of the code file, the SPSS syntax file that can be used to import the data file.

savfile

The name of the SPSS format .sav file (alternative for writing a datafile and a codefile).

fileEncoding

The encoding to use to write the files.

newLinesInString

A string to replace newlines with (SPSS has problems reading newlines).

expression

Logical expression determining which rows to keep and which to drop. Can be either a logical vector or a string which is then evaluated. If it's a string, it's evaluated using 'with' to evaluate the expression using the variable names.

replaceOriginalDataframe

Whether to also replace the original dataframe in the parent environment. Very messy, but for maximum compatibility with the 'SPSS way of doing things', by default, this is true. After all, people who care about the messiness/inappropriateness of this function wouldn't be using it in the first place :-)

envir

The environment where to create the 'backup' of the unfiltered dataframe, for when useAll is called and the filter is deactivated again.

replaceFilteredDataframe

Whether to replace the filtered dataframe passed in the 'dat' argument (see replaceOriginalDataframe).

vector

For mediaan and modus, the vector for which to find the median or mode.

Value

getData returns the imported dataframe, with the filename from which it was read stored in the 'filename' attribute.getDat is a simple wrapper for getData() which creates a dataframe in the parent environment, by default with the name 'dat'. Therefore, calling getDat() in the console will allow the user to select a file, and the data from the file will then be read and be available as 'dat'. If an object with dfName (i.e. 'dat' by default) already exists, it will be backed up with a warning. getDat() therefore returns nothing.mediaan returns the median, or, in the case of a factor where the median is in between two categories, both categories.modus returns the mode.

Examples

Run this code


### Open a dialogue to read an SPSS file
### (wrapped in 'if (interactive())' to prevent execution during
###  the testing of the examples when building the package)
if (interactive()) {
  getData();
}

### Get a median and a mode
mediaan(c(1,2,2,3,4,4,5,6,6,6,7));
modus(c(1,2,2,3,4,4,5,6,6,6,7));

### Create an example dataframe
(exampleDat <- data.frame(x=rep(8, 8), y=rep(c(0,1), each=4)));
### Filter it, replacing the original dataframe
(filterBy(exampleDat, "y=0"));
### Restore the old dataframe
(useAll(exampleDat));

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