Study Number 3290 - Work Attitudes and Spending in
India,
Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt,
1992-2007
NEW
EDITION INFORMATION
- The first edition of the study (1995) included data from
the original Work, Attitudes and Spending survey,
conducted in India in 1992.
- For the second edition, further data from India (gathered
in 1997
and 2002), and data from Brazil (1994), South Africa (2000) and
Indonesia (2001-2002), were added to the study.
- For the third edition (April 2008), the existing study
materials
were replaced, and further data from India (gathered in 2007), Nigeria
(2003 and 2005), Kenya (2004) and Egypt (2005-2006) were added.
DATA
PROCESSING NOTES
Data Archive Processing Standards
The data were processed to the UK Data Archive's C standard,
which is the Archive's minimal processing level. A series of checks was
carried out to ensure the quality of the data. Checks were made that
the number of cases and variables matched the depositor's records. Any
data or documentation that breached confidentiality rules were altered
or suppressed to preserve anonymity.
All notable and/or outstanding problems discovered are
detailed under the 'Data and documentation problems' heading below.
Data and documentation problems
None encountered.
Useful Notes
Data are available as combined files, which include data from all Work, Attitudes and Spending
(WAS) surveys, or as raw data from each individual country survey.
Users are advised to read the documentation for full details. The
combined files are 'was_at_current_prices.sav' (combined data from all
waves, at current prices) and 'was_at_constant_prices.sav' (combined
data from all waves, converted to US$).
The original structure of the study has been retained at the
depositor's request, and for this reason the alternative formats (Stata
and tab-delimited files) have not been generated by the UKDA.
Therefore, this study is only available in SPSS format.
Data conversion information
From January 2003 onwards, almost all data conversions have
been performed using software developed by the UKDA. This enables
standardisation of the conversion methods and ensures optimal data
quality. In addition to its own data processing/conversion code, this
software uses the SPSS and Stat/Transfer command processors to perform
certain format translations. Although data conversion is automated, all
data files are also subject to visual inspection by a UKDA data
processing officer.
With some format conversions data, and more especially
internal metadata (i.e. variable labels, value labels, missing value
definitions, data type information), will inevitably be lost or
truncated owing to the differential limits of the proprietary formats.A
UKDA Data Dictionary file (in rich text format), corresponding to each
data file, is usually provided for viewing and searching the internal
metadata as it existed in the originating format. These files are
called:
[data file name]_UKDA_Data_Dictionary.rtf
Important information about the data format supplied
The links below provide important information about the format
in which you have been supplied the data. Some of this information is
specific to the ingest format of the data, that is
the format in which the UKDA was supplied the data in. The ingest
format for this study was
SPSS
Please click below to find out information about the format
that you have been supplied the data in.
SPSS
(*.por)
SPSS portable (*.por files)
If SPSS portable was not the ingest format, this format will generally
either have been created via the SPSS command processor (e.g. if the
ingest format is SPSS .sav, SAS, Excel, or dBase), or if the ingest
format was STATA, the SPSS version will be created via the
Stat/Transfer command processor. If the ingest format was undelimited
text, the data will have been read into SPSS using an SPSS command
file.
Issues: There is very seldom any loss of data or internal
metadata when importing data files into SPSS. Any problems will have
been listed above in the Data and Documentation Problems section of
this file.
STATA
(*.dta)
STATA (*.dta files)
If STATA was not the ingest format, all STATA files will have been
created from SPSS .sav format via the Stat/Transfer command processor.
Importantly, Stat/Transfer's optimisation routine is run so that
variables with SPSS write formats narrower than the data (e.g. numeric
variables with 10 decimal places of data formatted to FX.2) are not
rounded upon conversion to STATA because they are converted to 'doubles
' rather than floats. User missing values are copied across into STATA
(as opposed to being collapsed into a single system missing code).
Issues: There are a number of data and metadata handling
mismatches between SPSS and STATA. Where any data or internal metadata
has been lost or truncated, this will have been automatically logged in
this file: 3290_SPSS_to_STATA_conversion.rtf Note that the complete
internal metadata has been suppliedin the UKDA Data Dictionary file(s):
[data file name]_UKDA_Data_Dictionary.rtf
Tab-delimited
text (*.tab)
If tab-delimited text was not the ingest format, tab-delimited
fileswill have beencreated from SPSS portable files via the SPSS
command processor, and also from Excel and MS Access files. When
exporting from Access data tables to tab-delimited text, thepotentially
problematicspecial characters (tabs, carriage returns, line feeds,
etc.) allowed by Access memo and text fields are stripped out by the
UKDA.
Issues: Date formats in SPSS are always exported to mm/dd/yyyy
in tab-delimited text format - sothere be be amismatch with the
documentation on such variables. Variables that include both date and
time such as dd-mm-yyyy hh:mm:ss (e.g. 18-JUN-2001 13:28:00), will lose
the time information and become mm/dd/yyyy. If the time information is
critical, a new variable will have been created in the tab-delimited
data file by the UKDA. All users of the data in tab-delimited format
should consult the UKDA Data Dictionary file(s): [data file
name]_UKDA_Data_Dictionary.rtf
If the data was exported from MS Access, more limited 'data
documenter' information is suppiedin the file(s): [data table
name]_variableinformation.rtf These files may also contain SQL setup
information.
MS
Excel (*.xls files)
If MS Excel was not the ingest format, Excel fileswill havebeencreated
via the SPSS command processor. The date and time issues noted under
tab-delimited formatapply to SPSS to Excel conversion via the SPSS
command processor.
SAS
(supplied as *.dat and *.sas)
If SAS was not the ingest format, all SAS files will have been
created from SPSS .sav format via the Stat/Transfer command processor.
The data files are provided as a fixed-width text file (*.dat) and a
SAS command file (*.sas), which when run will create a SAS dataset.
This enables the user to recreate the SAS dataset and formats library
in almost all versions of SAS and all operating systems.
Issues: The main loss of information when converting from SPSS
to SAS is user-missing value definitions. By editing the .sas file, the
user can choose whether to collapse all user-missing values into system
missing or preserve thevalue and lose the user-missing definition. To
achieve the latterthe following section of the .sas file should be
removed before running it:
/* User Missing Value Specifications */
Note that the complete internal metadata has been suppliedin
the UKDA Data Dictionary file(s): [data file
name]_UKDA_Data_Dictionary.rtf
MS
Access (*.mdb files)
Due to the substantial incompatibilities between versions of
MS Access, the UKDA only make data available in MS Access format if
this is the ingest format and the database contains important
information in addition to the data tables (coding information, forms,
queries, etc.).
Conversion of documentation formats
Electronic and paper documentation supplied with this study is
usually incorporated into the UKDA User Guide (in PDF format). The
conversion programmes used are the latest versions of Adobe PDF Writer
for electronic documentation and Adobe Paper Capture (Acrobat 'plugin'
version) for paper documentation. Occasionally, someof the electronic
documentation cannot be usefully converted to PDF (e.g. MS Excel files
with wide worksheets) and this is supplied ina more appropriate format.
All User Guides are fully bookmarked.