Many easy options have been proposed for combining the values of categorical variables in SPSS. However, the real information is usually in the value labels instead of the values. This tutorial proposes a simple trick for combining categorical variables and automatically applying correct value labels to the result. SPSS Combine Categorical Variables Example You may follow along by downloading and opening hospital.sav. Now say […]
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 […]
Summary The SPSS INDEX function returns the position of the first occurrence of a given expression within a string. If the expression does not occur in the string, it returns a zero. As a rule of thumb, always use it as CHAR.INDEX. The reason for this is explained SPSS Unicode Mode. Note that string values are case sensitive. SPSS Index […]
This tutorial walks you through SPSS’ main statistical functions. They are mainly used with COMPUTE and IF. Note that these are all within-subjects (or “horizontal”) functions. For between-subjects (or “vertical”) functions, see AGGREGATE. All examples in this tutorial use hospital.sav, which is freely downloadable. Within-subjects versus between-subjects functions. SPSS Statistical Functions – Missing Values SPSS statistical functions only return system missing values if all their input values […]
Most real world data contain some (or many) missing values. It’s always a good idea to inspect the amount of missingness for avoiding unpleasant surprises later on. In order to do so, SPSS has some missing values functions that are mostly used with COMPUTE, IF AND DO IF. This tutorial demonstrates how to use them effectively. We’ll do so […]
Computing new variables -often as means or sums over other variables- is usually done with COMPUTE. If you want to do so for only some cases but not others, use IF instead. Some alternatives for creating new variables in SPSS are RECODE, AUTORECODE, AGGREGATE and RANK. Computing Variables Tutorials SPSS Missing Values Functions SPSS COMPUTE – Simple Tutorial
SPSS RECODE replaces data values with different values. It comes in handy for merging categories, dichotomizing continuous variables and some other tasks. This tutorial walks you through its main options, best practices and pitfalls. SPSS Recode Example 1 For quickly getting very proficient with RECODE it’s recommended you follow along with the examples. You’ll soon notice […]
