Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 22:05:39 -0400
Reply-To: Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Sender: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: Government Number
In-Reply-To: <20051029173329.3253.qmail@web90201.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
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Well, a quick answer, probably to be improved by others.
At 01:33 PM 10/29/2005, Omar Farook wrote:
>I have a data which represent the government number of the lands in
>our city.
>We might find more than one pattern for the government numbers e.g.,
>991, 848/851, 814/A, 882-821 and 820/820/A.
Let me see if I have this right:
This is to be a single variable in SPSS
It is a column in an Excel spreadsheet to be transferred to SPSS.
>What is the type of the variable is it numeric or string?
It has to be a string variable. A numeric variable can hold value 991,
but none of the other values. If "820/820/A" is the longest possible
value, it's (A9).
>How can we transfer it from Excel to SPSS?
I assume you are familiar with transferring data from Excel to SPSS in
general. Special concerns for this quantity are,
A. Make sure it is read as A9. I understand that SPSS 'reviews' some of
the data before deciding on the format of the variable it's creating,
but to make sure, add a row before the real data with 'template' values
(values of the right type and maximum length) for all your variables.
This variable should have a 9-character string in that row, say a
string of nine Xs
B. Make sure there are no numeric values in the column. Make a COPY of
the spreadsheet for this. This works for me
1. Select the column
2. Menu "Data/Text to Column"
3. Step 1: Choose "Delimited", the default.
-- Step 2: Make sure the only delimiter is Tab, so it won't make more
than one column. (It probably won't try to, but make sure.)
-- Step 3: Column data format: choose "Text"
-- Finish.
>What should we put in the measure field in SPSS variable view?
Nominal
-Good luck,
Richard Ristow
