Importing .sxv4 (SuperCROSS) datasets into Stata

[Josh Budlender]

Hello

I wanted to know if anybody has experience importing .sxv4 (SuperCROSS) files into Stata, or has an idea of how I might do this.

I am working with South African national census data which comes in this format. Currently I am forced to use the SuperCROSS program to create cross-tabulations, export this as a CSV file, and then import this into Stata. I have a strong preference for working in Stata from the beginning, as I find the SuperCROSS programme to be very clumsy for my purposes.

In case it helps, I have included a link below to one of the Census datasets in .sxv4 form (the compressed file is 73 mb and I had issues directly uploading it as an attachment to the Statalist).

To briefly describe the datatset: The data in the link has 10 "variables" from the national census. The census data is reported at the "Small Area Level" (SAL), which is the finest level of granularity released for public use by South Africa's national statistical agency. Each Small Area contains a number of people, normally around 1000, but this can vary dramatically. In Stata form, I imagine that each small area (denoted by a numeric code) would be one observation. When I said the data had 10 "variables" above, I used quotation marks because while in SuperCROSS there is one "Geography" variable, this can be disaggregated from a provincial-level variable all the way to the Small Area Level, and in Stata I imagine this as more than one variable.

I have little experience managing data outside of Stata and Excel and would be very grateful for any help offered.

Best,

Josh Budlender

[Josh Budlender]

After talking to South African colleagues about this, it turns out that the datasets I'm looking for are already available in Stata format from the University of Cape Town's DataFirst unit. I have attached a link to the dataset for anyone interested. I was aware of this data but for some reason thought it was not provided at the level of granularity required for my analysis. It is actually provided at the Small Area Level, just like the SuperCross format data.

Unless anybody has any objections, I will leave this thread up, in case somebody has a reply to the general .sxv4 to .dta question, which may be useful to someone else in a different context. The specific SA census data question my be useful for others as well.

[Harry Moultrie]

Thank you Josh, very helpful link to datafirst. Datafirst however does not seem to provide the SAL shape files for GIS analysis. Did you manage to extract the shape files from supercross? Do you have them?

[Josh Budlender]

Hi Harry

The CDs I purchased from Stats SA (how I got the .sxv4 data at the Small Area Level) had a folder with the shape files at various levels of analysis (SAL to Province-level). The fee I paid Stats SA was a nominal processing fee, and the data is meant to be publicly available anyway, so I don't mind sharing the data. The compressed data files are available below in a link to a Dropbox folder.

If somebody can re-upload these files to a more permanent online location (which won't use up my Dropbox storage allocation!) I'd be grateful. It seems the compressed file is a bit too big to upload directly to the Statalist forum (282 MB), at least with my South African internet connection

Best,

Josh Budlender

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n6snztceo...Foo3YuGpa?dl=0