Chapter 9
Computing New Variables
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting acquainted with the Compute Variable menu
Creating new variables with formulas
Using If conditions
Understanding system variables
The Compute Variable dialog, which you access from the Transform menu, is one of the most frequently used dialogs in all of SPSS. Why? This dialog, shown in Figure 9-1, contains dozens of functions as well as numerous arithmetic operators and logical operators that perform all kinds of calculations.
The Compute Variable dialog is also where you go to make new variables out of existing ones. To do so, you build your own formulas in which you combine variables in your dataset with simple arithmetic operators. This process is the focus of the chapter. In the next chapter, we will continue our discussion of the Compute Variable dialog, but with a focus on several of those fancy functions.
Even though you will be getting help from the Compute Variable dialog, at times it will feel like programming, albeit at a basic level. If you don’t have much programming experience, it may seem a little tricky, at ...
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