Dates in labelled_spss

[greenhorn82]

Hi,

when using labelled_spss with date columns it converts all columns to numeric and exports them incorrectly. Without adding a label write_sav can correctly export dates.

Robert

# Haven Bug-report 
rm(list = ls())
library(haven)

data_example <- data.frame(example_date1 = lubridate::ymd(20101215))
data_example$example_date2 <- labelled_spss(data_example$example_date1,
                                            label = "testlabel")
haven::write_sav(data_example, "example.sav")

[dusadrian]

I would like to second this issue.
Date/Time variables can also have missing values, as well as value labels (for those missing values, for instance).
It would be great to export .sav files for more than just character and numeric variables.

[gorcha]

Hi @greenhorn82,

The labelled() and labelled_spss() functions don't currently support date variables, and running these functions without specifiny a set of value labels still runs them through the rest of the preparation/validation code which forces a conversion to numeric. Will make a note to update the documentation/checks to make this clearer.

Adding a variable label only requires the addition of a "label" attribute - I'd recommend checking out the labelled package, which has a set of helper functions to make this easier where creating a full labelled vector is not required. For e.g.:

library(haven)
library(labelled)

data_example <- data.frame(example_date1 = lubridate::ymd(20101215))
var_label(data_example$example_date1) <- "testlabel"
write_sav(data_example, "example.sav")

[dusadrian]

We know these function don't currently support date variables. I would just be great to add this functionality, especially since a software like Stata does support value labels for date variables.

This makes conversion from Stata incomplete, and exporting to SPSS likewise.

Library declared does support value labels for date/time variables (in R) but since haven is responsible with the import / export, that would be a greatly appreciated feature.