Afrobarometer Vignette

[lcsanford]

I am trying to replicate the Afrobarometer Vignette: https://retroharmonize.dataobservatory.eu/articles/afrobarometer.html

I have copied the data files and saved them, and updated the file paths. When I run:

ab_waves <- read_surveys(afrobarometer_rounds, .f='read_spss')

I get:

Reading: merged_r6_data_2016_36countries2.sav
Reading: merged-round-5-data-34-countries-2011-2013-last-update-july-2015_0.sav
Reading: r7_merged_data_34ctry.release.sav
Warning message:
In read_spss(file = filename, user_na = TRUE) :
Error: Failed to parse /data/Afrobarometer/merged_r6_data_2016_36countries2.sav: Unable to convert string to the requested encoding (invalid byte sequence).

Returning an empty survey.

Any idea what is causing this?

[lcsanford]

As I move through the vignette, a couple of other questions:
It doesn't look like merge_surveys() is a function in 2.0 or 2.5, but when I switch to merge_waves as in https://rdrr.io/cran/retroharmonize/f/inst/doc/afrobarometer.Rmd I get the following warning:

Warning messages:
1: In FUN(X[[i]], ...) :
rowid is not selected from merged-round-5-data-34-countries-2011-2013-last-update-july-2015_0.sav
2: In FUN(X[[i]], ...) :
rowid is not selected from r7_merged_data_34ctry.release.sav

[antaldaniel]

Hi @lcsanford, I am sorry about this. We are working on a major rewrite of the package and the vignettes, too. I'll look into this specific issue, but a new interface will come with a much better functionality.

[antaldaniel]

The first issue is that one of your files is not read. That file may be corrupt. Please try to read it with haven::read_spss then retroharmonize::read_spss, and let me know if you succeed with any of these. If not, please try to open the file, if you have, with an SPSS file compatible software, and report to me the verisons of haven and retroharmonize you use.

First all files should be read into your system. I will look into the second issue.