Connect to TALIS Data

Opens a connection to a TALIS data file and returns an edsurvey.data.frame with information about the file and data.

Usage

readTALIS(
  path,
  countries,
  isced = c("b", "a", "c"),
  dataLevel = c("teacher", "school"),
  forceReread = FALSE,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

path: a character vector to the full directory path(s) to the TALIS SPSS files (.sav)
countries: a character vector of the country/countries to include using the three-digit ISO country code. A list of country codes can be found in the TALIS codebook, or you can use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1#Current_codes. You can use * to indicate all countries available.
isced: a character value that is one of a, b, or c. a stands for Primary Level, b is for Lower Secondary Level, and c is for Upper Secondary Level. Default to b.
dataLevel: a character value that indicates which data level to be used. It can be teacher (the default) or school (see details).
forceReread: a logical value to force rereading of all processed data. Defaults to FALSE. Setting forceReread to be TRUE will cause readTALIS data to be reread and increase processing time.
verbose: a logical value that will determine if you want verbose output while the function is running to indicate the progress. Defaults to TRUE.

Value

an edsurvey.data.frame for a single specified country or an edsurvey.data.frame.list if multiple countries specified

Details

Reads in the unzipped files downloaded from the TALIS database using the OECD Repository (https://www.oecd.org/education/talis.html). If dataLevel is set to be teacher, it treats the teacher data file as the main dataset, and merges school data into teacher data for each country automatically. Use this option if wanting to analyze just teacher variables, or both teacher and school level variables together. If dataLevel is set school, it uses only the school data file (no teacher data will be available).

References

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2018). TALIS 2018 technical report. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/talis/TALIS_2018_Technical_Report.pdf

Author

Paul Bailey, Tom Fink, and Trang Nguyen

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
#TALIS 2018 - school level data for all countries
talis18 <- readTALIS(path = "~/TALIS/2018", 
                     isced = "b", 
                     dataLevel = "school", 
                     countries = "*")

#unweighted summary
result <- summary2(data=talis18, variable="tc3g01", weightVar = "")

#print usa results to console
result$usa

# the following call returns an edsurvey.data.frame to TALIS 2013 
# for US teacher-level data at secondary level
usa2013 <- readTALIS(path = "~/TALIS/2013", isced = "b",
                     dataLevel = "teacher", countries = "usa")

# extract a data.frame with a few variables
gg <- getData(usa2013, c("tt2g05b", "tt2g01"))  
head(gg)

# conduct an analysis on the edsurvey.data.frame
edsurveyTable(formula=tt2g05b ~ tt2g01, data = usa2013) 
} # }