SPSS – Merge Categories of Categorical Variable

Summary Merging some categories of a categorical variable in SPSS is not hard if you do it the right way. This tutorial demonstrates just that. We recommend you try the examples for yourself by downloading and opening hotel_evaluation.sav. Right, when doing a routine inspection of this data file, we’ll see that the variable nation has many small categories. This becomes apparent when […]

SPSS AUTORECODE Command

SPSS AUTORECODE – Minimal Example autorecode str_var1 str_var2 str_var3 /into num_var1 num_var2 num_var3. Introduction This tutorial explains SPSS’ AUTORECODE command and shows how to use it properly on nominal_strings.sav, a screenshot of which is shown below. We recommend downloading this data file and following along with the steps in this tutorial. SPSS AUTORECODE – What Is It? […]

SPSS Clone Variables Tool

In SPSS, I don’t like to recode variables into new variables: the new variables don’t have any dictionary information such as variable/value labels or formats. Second, a recoded variable is appended to the end of the file but I rather have it in its original position. Both problems are avoided by recoding into the same variables. However, […]

SPSS Recode Values with Value Labels

Introduction In SPSS we sometimes find ordinal variables where lower values indicate more positive attitudes or larger quantities. An example is shown in the screenshot below. Now, the coding scheme shown above is not really ‘wrong’ in any way. However, we usually prefer higher values indicating more positive attitudes or larger quantities because we find this more […]