SPSS Statistics For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 11

Combining Files

IN THIS CHAPTER

Combining files by adding cases

Combining files by adding variables when doing a one-to-one match

Combining files by adding variables when doing a one-to-many match

Data is often kept in different files. Sometimes these files are similar (for example, the same customer information just separated by store); other times the files are very different (for example, customer satisfaction information in one file and financial information in another). IBM SPSS Statistics has two facilities available for merging files: Add Cases joins data files that contain similar variables for separate groups of cases; Add Variables joins data files that contain different information for the same cases.

Merging Files by Adding Cases

Add Cases appends cases with the same or similar variables. Figure 11-1 illustrates a simple Add Cases merge of two files containing customer satisfaction records. Both files have the same variables, Satisfaction and Years_Customer. The variables must have the same name, coded values, and type (for example, string vs. numeric) in both files. In this example, there are three cases in each of the files, so the combined file has six ...