My apologies for using the wrong word in my post about using the
WLS data. I do have a problem with using your codebook data, but
that was a wrong way to put it. What I meant was that the PDF
and HTML files are not in an easily machine readable format, and there
was not much I could do with them but print them out. In the post
you quoted from I expressed my frustration too bluntly and carelessly,
ignoring the existence of large statistical packages that would
give me access to the codebook data. I couldn’t affort to spend
a lot of money on a package whose only purpose would be
to translate the codebook data into the kind of simple digital
format I could use directly.

I did indeed mention Stata in the immediately previous post. I would
much rather you, (or whoever mentioned my post to you) had read
that previous post, which began:

“In case anyone else wants to play about with the same data
I’ll be using to prototype with, the site to go to is … home of the
famous Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, the WLS. Their data is
wonderful stuff, believe me. I don’t like the way social surveys are
done, but I think this the best of a poor lot, at least. Very good
for our purposes. I have downloaded by the Comma Separated Value,
CSV, format data and the Stata data, hoping that the R documentation
is correct in saying that R can import Stata data files. I don’t actually
want to use R, though it is a great package, not to mention free,
but from R it is easy enough to export it in a format that I can read and
manipulate using Python. I am more concerned about the variable
information in the Stata files than the actual user response data,
which I could easily read using the CSV files.”

I wrote that the data I wanted was not available in digitized form simply
simply because the codebooks in PDF and HTML might as well be paper,
as there is very little I could do with them but print them. I should have
spelled that out.

As for the data in SAS, SPSS and Stata, that is another matter.
As the earlier post quoted above, I said that Ihoped I could extract
variable information (by which I meant codebook data) from the Stata files,
if indeed R would import them read them the export the codebook
information into a format I could read with an ordinary programing
language like Python. Even that now seems futile, because the R
I used to use will not run only the only machine I have now, a 64-bit one.

My real problem is trying to start a project which has no budget for
big statistical packages like SAS, SPSS or Stata. This would
have been so simple to do if you had made codebook data available
in something as simple the CSV you provide for the tabular
data itself. As it stands, I find myself sitting here with a
powerful computer and a good programming language which
runs on it, but no way of accessing your codebook data.

That was the the source of the rather severe frustration which
led me to say the wrong thing about your codebooks.

Thank you for responding so quickly to my comments, and for
suggesting that I contact WLS project staff. I promise to
correct all of my misrepresentations in today’s blog post.

— dpw

RMH

I do not understand the complaint that [The WLS] “had no digitized codebook to offer for the main study, only for a few minor ones.” They are available on-line in PDF and in HTML. Look at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/documentation/waves/, and follow the links on that page. Downloading the data file into SAS, SPSS,
or Stata will provide a codebook as well.

Additional queries about the WLS data and documentation may be addressed to wls@ssc.wisc.edu.

WLS project staff are also interested to learn more about what you are trying to do with the data and documentation.

RMH
Principal Investigator
Wisconsin Longitudinal Study