ExportSPSSsav plugin

ExportSPSSsav is a core plugin that adds a native SPSS binary export format, SPSS (.sav), to the Export responses screen.

  This is a different, newer export method than the classic SPSS syntax export described on the main Export responses page. That method produces a syntax file (.sps) and a separate data file (.dat) that SPSS has to run as a script to import and label. This plugin instead writes a single, ready-to-open .sav file — SPSS's own native binary format — with no import script needed. It can also be opened directly in PSPP, the free/open-source SPSS-compatible statistics tool.

Using it

On the Export responses screen, select SPSS (.sav) from the export format list, instead of the older SPSS syntax option. Because the .sav format stores variable names, variable labels and value labels directly in the file itself, selecting this format automatically forces several of the export dialog's other options, regardless of what is otherwise selected on screen:

• Answer codes is used (not "Full answers") — the underlying numeric/short codes are written as the data values, while the full answer text is stored separately as SPSS value-label metadata.
• Convert Y to and Convert N to are enabled, recoding Yes/No answers to 1/0 with "Yes"/"No" value labels attached, instead of literal Y/N characters.
• Full question text is used as the heading style — the question code is always used as the SPSS variable name, and the full question text always becomes that variable's label, independently of the heading style shown on screen.

Fixed-choice question types (such as Multiple choice, Yes/No, Gender, and 5-point/increase-decrease arrays) automatically get their value labels written into the file (for example, Yes/No, or Female/Male), so they display correctly in SPSS/PSPP without any further setup. Free-text "other" answers are excluded from this automatic labeling, so they are not mistaken for coded answers. Date fields (submission date, start date, response date) are written using SPSS's native date storage, so they can be used directly in SPSS date calculations rather than needing to be parsed from text.

Settings

The plugin has one setting (Configuration -> Plugin manager -> ExportSPSSsav -> Settings):

• Export for SPSS: choose between "versions 14 and above" (default) and "version 13 and below (limited string length)". This only controls the maximum length allowed for text answers written into the file — 32767 characters for version 14 and above, or 255 characters for version 13 and below. Answers longer than this limit are silently truncated, not rejected or wrapped.

Limitations

• Long free-text answers are truncated to the length allowed by the Export for SPSS setting above; there is no warning shown when this happens.
• The full set of responses being exported is built in memory before the file is written, which can use more memory than a classic export on very large response sets.
• There is no character-encoding option — exported files always use UTF-8.