Hi,
I have a huge data set (actually the General Social Survey early
release for 2004 that includes the entire GSS). The GSS data set is in
SPSS and has almost 5000 variables, most of which are only asked in a
few years. I am working with regular (intercooled) Stata 9 and do not
have SE. I have truncated the data set in SPSS but the data set still
has the same number of variables, most of which will be entirely missing
data. Can't use StatTransfer easily since this would require looking at
each variable and dropping those all missing one by one. If I had Stata
SE, I could use Nick Cox's dropmiss to get rid of variables with no
valid cases. But my problem now is that I can't get the data into Stata
at all (too many variables). Is there a way to get rid of these null
variables in SPSS before I use StatTransfer?
There is probably an easier way, but how about using SPSS to create two
smaller data sets of 2,500 vars each (or whatever works), convert to Stata,
use -dropmiss-, and then merge your files back together?
