Re: st: SPSS to Stata issues

[Christian Holz <statalist@krueschan.de>]

Hello,
actually, there IS a (much) more easy way. Below a quote from the 
Stat/Transfer 7 helpfile. The feature actually works correctly.
Best regards,
Christian Holz

"Automatic Dropping of Constants from the Output File

You can tell Stat/Transfer to automatically drop variables that are 
constant or missing for a selected subset of data.  You select this 
option by checking the Drop Constants check box and then pressing the 
Optimize button.
This feature is useful when the part of a data set selected for transfer 
contains variables with values that are either constant or missing (such 
as a pregnancy variable when only male subjects are selected or 
variables in yearly surveys where the same questions do not appear for 
each year.)
This feature is not likely to be used often, but is extremely valuable 
when it is needed, since if the data set has a large number of 
variables, it can be exceedingly tedious to select only the meaningful 
ones manually."



Richard Williams wrote:

> At 01:52 PM 8/15/2005 -0400, Eric Uslaner wrote:
>
> > 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?
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
> OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
> FAX:    (574)288-4373
> HOME:   (574)289-5227
> EMAIL:  Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.Edu
> WWW (personal):    http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam
> WWW (department):    http://www.nd.edu/~soc
>
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