Re: Noob needs help with simple script

[David Spaugh]

Wow - thanks!

 

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ahcd/ahcd_questionnaires.htm

 

Scroll down to Public-use Data Files / Downloadable Data Files.

Click the link for NAMCS, 1993-2008.

Choose NAMCS08.exe. 

This downloads a 2.2MB zip file to your drive, which extracts to a 27MB data file.  That's the file I'm working with. 

 

FYI, FWIW, etc:  If you surf the links for related documentation, you'll see that gov actually provided an SPSS script for file import for a few data-sets from 2006 and earlier.  That was actually my personal discovery point for PSPP, leading to my attempt to create a simple script for the 2008 data file, and to this email.  My goal is much simpler than the "segregate and label" functions provided by the huge gov script.  I only need to import the data into a usable PSPP "spreadsheet" to sort & determine the number of 382.x diagnoses, and then what proportion of those were accompanied by a certain prescription drug code.  I'll then adapt & apply the same script to multiple prior years and to evaluate trends in antibiotic drug consumption for that diagnosis. 

 

Anyway - thanks very much.  The PSPP app & community is impressive even to an amateur such as myself. 

 

DS

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Ben Pfaff" <address@hidden>

To: "David Spaugh" <address@hidden>

Cc: <address@hidden>

Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:20 PM

Subject: Re: Noob needs help with simple script

> Hi 
David.
> 
> PSPP should be able to read the file that you 
described.  I guess
> that this is a publicly available data set, 
since it is US
> government data.  If so, can you pass along a 
pointer to it?
> I'll run the syntax that you provided on it here and, if 
I see
> the same problem, then I'll do my best to fix it.
> 
> 
Thanks,
> 
> Ben.
> -- 
> Ben Pfaff 
> http://benpfaff.org