Date:         Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:36:36 -0600
Reply-To:     "Peck, Jon" <peck@spss.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Peck, Jon" <peck@spss.com>
Subject:      Re: How to flag individuals who participated 3 years in
              a row
Comments: To: "Norton, John" <jnorton@spss.com>
In-Reply-To:  A<3440368C27E66D4588AF902A2A9EB8E201A7684E@CHIEMAIL1.spss.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

With slightly recent versions of SPSS, just add the aggregated count back to the original variables.  No need to save a separate file and merge.

-Jon Peck

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Norton, John
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 1:28 PM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SPSSX-L] How to flag individuals who participated 3 years in a row

Hi Don,

You can aggregate the file (Data .. Aggregate..) on the keys you mentioned, and request that the aggregate function count the number of occurrences.  If you select the option to save the aggregated data to an external file, you can then select those case IDs (using Data..  Select Cases [and delete all unselected cases]) which have 3 occurrences.  Then you can use that subset of cases as a table lookup to merge with the original data file (Data .. Merge files .. Add variables..) and thereby flag all cases which met your criteria.

HTH,

John Norton
SPSS Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Don Asay
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 2:12 PM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: How to flag individuals who participated 3 years in a row

I have a dataset with where data was collected over 3 years, some
individuals dropped out some individuals came on, but it seems like the
majority of those that participated in the first year also participated in
the last year. I want to figure out how many people participated in all
three years. Each year for each person is entered as its own record so
person 001 in year 2003 is stored 0012003 person 002 is 0022003 and so on.

The data has the aforementioned unique ID; a respondent ID; and the year
participated.

I tried sorting by year then unique Id then using a lag function to mark all
of the cases with a 1 if the case above has the same ID as the case being
examined. This lets me know if the person has participated before, but
doesn't tell me if they participated in all 3 years. I would like to come up
with a way to mark all of the individual cases if and only if they have
participated in all three years. Any suggestions would be helpful.

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