Yes, but variable labels aren't always that big a deal; value labels can
be more critical. You should rename/label, but it's fairly easy to
remember that V3 is sex. Good luck, however, remembering what the five
responses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 mean...
Elio ninja'd me last night because I spent a few minutes googling
whether there was a way to import a code book. I don't think there is,
and that's a shame. Labeling data is so important and such an
improvement in the SAV file format (over, say, SQL or CSV).
I guess the other way to deal with this is to not use codes, in favor of
response strings, in the dataset. So, the Sex variable might have
values: 'male', 'female', 'non-binary', etc. And I guess if you had your
labels in a spreadsheet you could probably arrange to use INDEX/MATCH to
replace the codes with response strings that would be clear to anyone
looking at the data. Of course, that solves the labeling in a way, but
when you import your data into PSPP, you then have to write a bunch of
syntax to change those strings (of numeric variables like Likert
responses) into numeric values to be used in analysis. And, I guess,
ideally you'd want those numeric variables to have sensible value labels.
-Alan
On 1/21/2022 11:50 AM, jhwh...@techwriteinc.com wrote:
If I understand the issue correctly, variable labels are not being
installed when importing some Excel files into PSPP. Is this correct?
Take care,
John
___________________________
Email: jhwh...@techwriteinc.com
*From:* Pspp-users
<pspp-users-bounces+jhwhite=techwriteinc....@gnu.org> *On Behalf Of
*Alan Mead
*Sent:* Thursday, January 20, 2022 9:23 PM
*To:* Marek Ludwig <marek.lud...@fh-potsdam.de>; pspp-users@gnu.org
*Cc:* Katja Behrndt <katja.behr...@fh-potsdam.de>
*Subject:* Re: Import Codebook
I find applying labels to be very time-consuming, so maybe that's bad
news for you. Maybe someone else will have a great idea.
But to make it as quick as possible, I'd recommend that you generate
syntax and execute that syntax. I think that will be MUCH quicker than
individually clicking and editing these values using the graphical
user interface.
A lot of people are scared of syntax, but it's not so hard. An added
advantage of doing it this way is that you easily fix an error by
fixing the syntax and re-running it.
Also, if you have the information in a spreadsheet, I would try to
generate the syntax using formulas in the spreadsheet. If column A
contained the spss variable name (maybe "V1") and column B contained
the variable label, then into cell C1 I would insert:
="variable labels "&A1&" '"&B1&"'."
(Note that there are single quotes, inside the double quotes, around
B1 because it's a string.)
If A1 = V1 and B1 = Beschriftung then this would generate:
variable labels V1 'Beschriftung'.
And if you paste that into a syntax window, add the line "Execute."
and run it, it would label this variable. You could paste 200 rows of
Column C, add "Execute." and create the 200 variable labels very easily.
The value labels could be done similarly but I'd have to see the
spreadsheet to devise the correct formula(s)...
This page describes the syntax:
http://www.statsmakemecry.com/smmctheblog/using-syntax-to-assign-variable-labels-and-value-labels-in-s.html
This includes my solution and suggests an alternative (that may not
work with PSPP):
https://www.reddit.com/r/spss/comments/mobw0z/import_excel_file_while_maintaining_variable/
Here are the relevant PSPP manual pages:
https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node/VALUE-LABELS.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node/VARIABLE-LABELS.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node/MISSING-VALUES.html
-Alan
On 1/19/2022 9:01 AM, Marek Ludwig wrote:
Dear All,
we have read in a CSV dataset that we had generated from an Excel
file. Unfortunately, the codebook got lost in the process, so
that the columns for labels("Beschriftung"), value labels
("Wertelabels") and missing values ("Fehlende Werte") are empty.
Since our dataset has over 200 variables, filling them in manually
would be very time consuming. Is there an efficient, faster
solution to read in the codebook or fill in these columns?
I would be very grateful for a hint!
Thanks a lot,
Marek
--
Alan D. Mead, Ph.D.
President, Talent Algorithms Inc.
science + technology = better workers
https://talalg.com
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you
take into account Hofstadter's Law.
--
Alan D. Mead, Ph.D.
President, Talent Algorithms Inc.
science + technology = better workers
https://talalg.com
Going was easy. Keep on going was hard.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin
