Exporting to SPSS

Note: Use of the SPSS Export feature in Data Processing and Data Central is subject to (i) your acceptance of the additional terms and conditions set forth under Home > Help > Third Party Software in Forsta, or the screen license in Data Central; and (ii) the continued validity of a Freeware License from SPSS Inc. The dlls used for enabling SPSS exports in Data Central and Data Processing are the copyright of SPSS Inc, © SPSS Inc.

Important:
For Forsta SaaS users: Forsta has not been authorized by the vendor of the SPSS Dimensions Data Model to obtain a license thereof. Due to this, Forsta is not able to support the import of SPSS data sources via the SPSS Dimensions Data model (e.g. Quanvert, Quancept, SPSS SAV, SurveyCraft).
For Forsta On-Premise users: In order for your company to take advantage of processing SPSS data (e.g. Quanvert, Quancept, SPSS SAV, SurveyCraft) with ForstaData Central, your company must obtain a license for the SPSS Dimensions Data Model from an authorized vendor.
For all users: Given Forsta has not been authorized to obtain a license of the SPSS Dimensions Data Model, Forsta is not able to test or reproduce issues related thereto. Forsta therefore expressly disclaims any and all warranties pertaining to operations you may perform related to SPSS data, such as but not limited to, loading SPSS data to / from Authoring, or running data through the SPSS Data Model on Forsta Data Central.

If you have selected the Format to be SPSS DAT, then the dialog that opens is as below. Note that if you have selected SPSS (sav), the dialog will be similar but without the Character Encoding and Decimal Delimiter fields.

Figure 1 - The second stage of the Export dialog for an SPSS DAT file export

1. Make the appropriate selections. The options are as follows:
• Character Encoding - [not available for SAV] defines the encoding for the data file. Choose between ANSI (default) and Unicode character encoding.

Important
The customer must enable the Unicode Character Encoding Option in SPSS itself before loading the sps/dat file.

• Decimal Delimiter - [not available for SAV] select the character to be used as the decimal point.
• Truncate Open Ends - For Open Ends (Open Text questions with no field width specified), it is recommended to truncate texts to improve performance. If a number of characters is specified for the Open Ends Width, texts longer than this limit, if any, will automatically be truncated. If No Truncation (Full Length) is selected, the whole text will be imported/exported, but the task will take significantly longer to execute.
• Loop Handling - this option is only available if the survey included loops. Here you specify how loops are to be handled for the export. The options are:
• Separate files - the default export format for loops creates one export file for each loop, and one export file for the top level. In the files containing the loop data there will be one row per loop iteration per respondent, so there will be several rows for each respondent. Each row will have the responseid (system generated respondent id) of the respondent and the precode of the loop id for the iteration as identifiers, and then the answers for the questions inside the loop for that specific iteration for that respondent. This means you can export a hierarchical survey without having to generate a flattened template.
• Single file - Instead of exporting loop data as separate files, you can export all data belonging to a survey in one single file. Loop data will then be expanded. This means that variables will be created to represent each iteration of each question.
• Position of Loop Variables - only available when Single file is selected in the Loop Handling option. This allows the user to specify in which position the loop variables should be exported. The options are:
• As in Survey - the loop variables are positioned as the corresponding loop was placed in the Survey.
• Appended at end - the loop variables are appended at the end of the template.
• Variables to include - you can build templates to choose a subset of data fields for your exports. If you check this box, select the template you wish to use.
• Exclude Hierarchy / Table Lookup Labels - check to exclude labels from the export.
• Override Filename - allows you to override the system-generated file name. Tick this checkbox to open the file name text-box. Here you can edit the system-generated name (go to APPENDIX F: EXPORT FILENAME DYNAMIC VALUES for more information). Note that when exporting Survey Data to the FTP server in Survey Data > Exports or Data Processing rules, the Override Filename option accepts relative paths, as for example “..\..\myftpfile_in_another_folder.txt”. In this case the file will not be stored in the default folder (“ProjectsData\p123123” or “RulesData\RuleN”), but rather directly under the (Company) Download folder.

Note: The '_^PROJECTID^_' part of the name will be replaced by the real survey id during the export. Default is ^PROJECTID^_^USERID^_^TASKID^ (if Date Filter is used, then ^START^ and ^END^ will also be included). ^PROJECTID^ is only "required" when executing a rule; it is not "required" when running an export using the Export GUI.

• Export language - in the event the survey is multi-lingual, select the survey language version to be exported.
• Text in Question Labels - select the text you wish to be included as the question labels. The options are:
• Text only - the label element will contain the question id followed by the text of the question, separated by a colon.
• Title only - the label element will contain the question id followed by the title of the question, separated by a colon.
• Title and Text - the label element will contain the question id followed by a colon, then the question title followed by the question text, these separated by a hyphen.
• Question ID - the label element will contain only the question id.

Note: As the engine that is used for the exports requires that the column titles are unique, and in Professional Authoring question titles can be the same on different questions, the question id is included first for all question label options.

• Text in Answer Element Labels - allows you to specify whether the Answer element of a Grid / Open Text List / Numeric List Question is to be positioned in front of the Question label, after the Question label or without the Question label when exporting survey data or when generating a Survey Data Template which can be used for a survey data export. The content of the Question label depends on the Text in Question Labels setting, which allows you to specify whether you want the Question ID, Question text, Question title or Question text and Title exported. Select the text you wish to be included as the answer labels. The options are:
• Answer (Question Label) - the question label is placed after the answer element.
• Question Label (Answer) - the question label is placed before the answer element.
• Answer - the answer element is placed without the question label.
• Include the answer label of Multi questions - allows you to specify whether answer labels will be exported as value labels in the SPSS file.

Note: When running exports with survey data templates, this option can only be activated if the Multi variables in the Survey Data Template are not split. If this option is selected, the answer labels are exported as value labels. If it is not selected, the value labels will be empty. If the Multi variables are split in the Survey Data Template, the value labels will be empty by default.

2. When you have made the appropriate selections, click Next to go to the third stage of the dialog.

Note: Authoring now supports very long text strings (up to 32767 bytes, supported from SPSS version 13), and long value labels (up to 120 bytes, supported from SPSS version 14).