How to preserve Labels when SPSS file (.sav

Question

I'm looking to work on a SPSS files (.sav) using pandas. In the absence of the SPSS program, here's what a typical file looks like when converted to .csv:

On investigation into what the first two rows signify (I don't know SPSS), it seems that the first row contains the Labels, while the second row contains the VarNames.

When I bring the file into pandas thus:

import pandas.rpy.common as com

def savtocsv(filename):
    w = com.robj.r('foreign::read.spss("%s", to.data.frame=TRUE)' % filename)
    w = com.convert_robj(w)
    return w

and then do a head(), the first row (Label) is missing:

How can labels be maintained?

• Ref: Is there a Python module to open SPSS files?
• Python: 2.7.10
• Pandas: 0.17.1

Answer 1

Labels in a sav file are stored in variable.labels attribute of the returning object from the read.spss function.

You can get the variable labels with the following:

import pandas.rpy.common as com

def get_labels(filename):
    w = com.robj.r('attr(foreign::read.spss("%s"), "variable.labels")' % filename)
    w = com.convert_robj(w)
    return w

If you want to set the labels as the column names of your dataframe:

import pandas.rpy.common as com

def savtocsv(filename):
    w = com.robj.r('foreign::read.spss("%s", to.data.frame=TRUE)' % filename)
    cols = list(com.robj.r("attr")(w, "variable.labels"))
    w = com.convert_robj(w)
    w.columns = cols
    return w