Hi Justin,

Assuming your racial group variables are numeric, the syntax below works...if they're string, convert them to numeric and the syntax will work. There may be a more elegant way of doing this but oh well.

-Ariel

**************************************************************. * Define some dummy data to work with. DATA LIST FREE /id white black asian hispanic native . BEGIN DATA 01547 1 0 0 0 0 01471 0 1 0 0 0 01931 0 0 1 0 0 05974 0 0 0 1 0 06471 0 0 0 0 1 05411 1 0 0 1 0 03418 0 0 0 0 0 END DATA.

COMPUTE race=0.

IF white=1 race=1. IF black=1 race=2. IF asian=1 race=3. IF hispanic=1 race=4. IF native=1 race=5. IF (SUM(white TO native)>1) race=8. IF (SUM(white TO native)=0) race=999. EXE.

VALUE LABELS race 1 White 2 Black 3 Asian 4 Hispanic 5 NativeAmerican 8 Multiracial 999 Sysmis. **************************************************************.

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Justin Meyer < justin.meyer@rowlandreading.org> wrote:

> Hi SPSS listers, > > > > I want to recode seven variables into one variable. Each of the seven > variables indicates a racial group, with 1=the student belongs to the > racial group and 0=the student does not belong to the racial group. I > want to turn the seven variables into one variable, with 1=Native > American, 2=Asian, 3=African American, and so on. In addition, I would > like 8=Multiracial (student marked more than one race) and 999=missing > (student didn't mark any race). Can anyone suggest a method for doing > this? I did attempt a few things and tried some searching, but I am out > of ideas. Thanks for your help! > > > > ____________________________________ > > Justin Meyer > > Researcher > > Rowland Reading Foundation > > 1 South Pinckney Street, Suite 324 > > Madison, WI 53703 > > phone: 866-370-7323 fax: 608-204-3846 > > www.rowlandreading.org <http://www.rowlandreading.org/> > > ____________________________________ > > To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the > command. To leave the list, send the command > SIGNOFF SPSSX-L > For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command > INFO REFCARD >

===================== To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the command. To leave the list, send the command SIGNOFF SPSSX-L For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command INFO REFCARD