IBM SPSS Essentials, 2nd Edition

Appendix DExample Syntax File Integrating Multiple Commands (Fulfilling Multiple Purposes)

The following example demonstrates how to combine two initially separate (and quite different) datasets. One dataset contains employee personality information; the other contains performance ratings from employees' supervisors, subordinates, and peers. In the personality dataset, each row represents one rated employee. The performance rating file contains several rows per rated employee (the different rows reflect supervisor, subordinate, or peer ratings of the rated employee). Additionally, these performance rating files typically contain different numbers of raters per rated individual. The goal of the syntax is to create a new data file in which one row contains (1) employee personality information, (2) one supervisor rating, (3) one peer rating, and (4) one subordinate rating. To start this example, we bring up the employee personality information, as shown in Figure D.1.

Figure D.1 Retrieve, sort, and save the personality data.

This brings up the original data file (personality.sav) and saves it as an ordered and sorted file (sorted personality.sav), as shown in Figure D.2.

Figure D.2 Personality data file.

Next, we grab the performance file and do the same sort procedure, ...