Note that the variable names provided in the .DCT files are uppercase. If you

prefer lower case variable names, you may wish to convert the .DCT files to

lower case prior to use. You may do this by reading the .DCT file into a text

or word processing program and changing the case. For instance in Microsoft

Word, Edit, Select All, Format, Change Case, lowercase.

7. Loading HRS Data Products in a Non-Windows Environment

All files released by The Health and Retirement Study are created in a Windows

environment. This means that non-Microsoft users will need to modify the default

Windows file structure syntax to match that of their own operating system. The

instructions in this section provide advice on how to make these changes.

7A. Working in an OS X Environment

The following examples should work for both Macintosh OS X and any Unix/Linux

distribution. Open the SAS program file(s), SPSS syntax file(s) or the Stata

do/dct files in an ASCII editor and make the changes indicated below.

Important items for Mac OS X users to consider:

1. Use Stuffit instead of Archive Utility to decompress the downloaded zip

file into a desktop folder.

2. When using the Apple ASCII text editor (TextEdit), select Preferences and

make these changes…

•

Under Format, select Plain text

Under Options, uncheck

Smart quotes

Smart dashes

Better yet, install and use TextWrangler

7A1. OS X: SPSS

In this example, we assume that the user has downloaded the 2022 tracker dataset

and placed the files in a Desktop folder called trk2022 with the ASCII data file

(.da) stored in subfolder data and the syntax file (.sps) in subfolder spss. The

commands in the syntax file(s) should be modified to look like this:

FILE HANDLE trk2022TR_R /name='~/Desktop/trk2022/data/TRK2022TR_R.da'

LRECL=221.

DATA LIST FILE= trk2022TR_R /

HHID 1-6(A)

[rest of syntax file goes here]

execute.

SAVE /outfile '~/Desktop/trk2022/spss/TRK2022TR_R.sav'.

Execute.

7A2. OS X: Stata

In the following example we assume that the user has downloaded the 2022 tracker

dataset and placed the files in a Desktop folder called trk2022 with the ASCII

data file (.da) stored in subfolder data and the syntax files (.do/.dct) in

subfolder stata. Next step is to modify the .do and .dct files in the stata

folder:

File TRK2022TR_R.do:

Change from…

infile using c:\trk2022\stata\TRK2022TR_R.dct

To…

infile using ~/Desktop/trk2022/stata/TRK2022TR_R.dct

February 2024, Version 1.0