Merge ILSA data

Merges 'SPSS' data from different International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSA). This function has been tested to behave correctly for: 'TIMSS', 'TIMSS Advanced', 'PIRLS', 'ICCS', 'ICILS', 'CIVED', 'REDS', 'RLII', and 'SITES' (2006).

Usage

ILSAmerge(
  inputdir = getwd(),
  outputdir = getwd(),
  population = NULL,
  filetype = c("rds", "zsav", "sav"),
  MBlimit = NULL,
  MBlistlimit = 200,
  SPSSlimit = 50,
  quiet = FALSE
)

Arguments

inputdir

a string indicating the path were ILSA 'SPSS' files are stored.

outputdir

the directory where the merged data will be saved.

population

a character vector indicating which files should be merged. If NULL (the default), all files will be merged. For more information on available populations, run ILSAfile.info() first.

filetype

a string indicating the type of file to be saved, it can be "rds", "zsav", or "sav".

MBlimit

a numerical value indicating the allowed limit of the combined storage of the files of one type (see ILSAfile.info()). For type files that go over the limit, files will not be merged in R, but an 'SPSS' syntax will be produced via spss.syntax(). If set to NULL, no limit will be used and all files will be merged within R. If speed is a problem, we recommend that this number should not be over 200 and merge the rest in 'SPSS'. Beware that some ILSA will have files with different columns and this could cause some 'SPSS' syntaxes to fail. If this happens, merge through R.

MBlistlimit

a numerical value indicating the allowed limit of the combined storage of the files of one type for merging through a list. Values over the limit will be merged through a matrix, which will be slower but uses less memory. Default is 200.

SPSSlimit

a numerical value indicating the limit of files per command of 'SPSS', typically 50.

quiet

a logical value indicating if status of progress should be shown. Default is FALSE.

Value

Saves merged ILSA data or .sps syntax for merging ILSA data.

Details

For files merged within R it will also add country information where needed. Country information will be retrieved from 'GitHub' if possible. If not, it will use the package internal data.

Examples

# Path were raw 'SPSS' files are
input <- system.file("extdata/reds", package = "ILSAmerge")

# Path were merged files will be saved
dir.create(file.path(tempdir(),"ILSAmerge"))
output <- file.path(tempdir(),"ILSAmerge")

# Merging 'REDS' 2021, as .rds file
ILSAmerge(inputdir = input, outputdir = output, filetype = "rds", quiet = FALSE)
#> 12 files detected. Merging into 3 files.
#> Merging BCGV1. Type 1 of 3.
#> Merging dataset 1 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 2 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 3 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 4 of 4.
#> Merging BCGV1 took 0 seconds or 0 minutes.
#> Merging BSGV1. Type 2 of 3.
#> Merging dataset 1 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 2 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 3 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 4 of 4.
#> Merging BSGV1 took 0 seconds or 0 minutes.
#> Merging BTGV1. Type 3 of 3.
#> Merging dataset 1 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 2 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 3 of 4.
#> Merging dataset 4 of 4.
#> Merging BTGV1 took 0 seconds or 0 minutes.
#> Merging took 0 seconds or 0.01 minutes.