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Import SAS data with haven

haven is an extremely easy-to-use package to import data from three software packages: SAS, STATA and SPSS. Depending on the software, you use different functions:

  • SAS: read_sas()
  • STATA: read_dta() (or read_stata(), which are identical)
  • SPSS: read_sav() or read_por(), depending on the file type.

All these functions take one key argument: the path to your local file. In fact, you can even pass a URL; haven will then automatically download the file for you before importing it.

You'll be working with data on the age, gender, income, and purchase level (0 = low, 1 = high) of 36 individuals (Source: SAS). The information is stored in a SAS file, sales.sas7bdat, which is available in your current working directory. You can also download the data here.

This is a part of the course

“Intermediate Importing Data in R”

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Exercise instructions

  • Load the haven package; it's already installed on DataCamp's servers.
  • Import the data file "sales.sas7bdat". Call the imported data frame sales.
  • Display the structure of sales with str(). Some columns represent categorical variables, so they should be factors.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Load the haven package


# Import sales.sas7bdat: sales


# Display the structure of sales
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