Reading in NHIS survey data with read.SAScii

[gbrlrz017]

Hi, I have a question about one of your examples in the documentation for read.SAScii.

Here's the verbatim example:

NHIS.11.samadult.SAS.read.in.instructions <-
"ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Program_Code/NHIS/2011/SAMADULT.sas"
NHIS.11.samadult.file.location <-
"ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Datasets/NHIS/2011/samadult.zip"

store the NHIS file as an R data frame!

NHIS.11.samadult.df <-
read.SAScii (
NHIS.11.samadult.file.location ,
NHIS.11.samadult.SAS.read.in.instructions ,
zipped = T, )

or store the NHIS SAS import instructions for use in a

read.fwf function call outside of the read.SAScii function

NHIS.11.samadult.sas <- parse.SAScii( NHIS.11.samadult.SAS.read.in.instructions )

save the data frame now for instantaneous loading later

save( NHIS.11.samadult.df , file = "NHIS.11.samadult.data.rda" )

I am trying to do the same with the 2010 version of the survey. However, with both this 2011 file and the 2010 file I get the error Error in toupper(SASinput) : invalid multibyte string 533 with the read.SAScii call. What can you make of it? Thanks!

[ajdamico]

hi, encoding. it is a waste of your time to re-do this on individual files. use the quick-start block at the top of

https://github.com/ajdamico/asdfree/blob/master/National%20Health%20Interview%20Survey/download%20all%20microdata.R#L8-L13

and everything will be imported automatically. thanks and keep in touch

[gbrlrz017]

Hey, thanks for this! I have the data loaded and ready to work with these next few weeks!