The Variable View window in SPSS contains information about the data that you can see in the Data View.
In this post I will go through each of the column titles to explain little more about what that column is for. Remember that each column in the Variable View window refers to a piece of data in the Data View.
Name - As you can probably guess this is the name of the dataset. In SPSS each name must be unique and the first character must be alphanumeric. You are not permitted to have any spaces in this field.
Type - This column contains details of what type of data your data set contains. In the main most data falls into 2 or 3 categories - String, Numeric or Date- although there are others, for example dollar for currencies.
If you click on the Type box at the top of the column this will open a dialogue box that will allow you to quickly define the data type.
Width - This is just allowing you to define the maximum number of characters that can be entered for the variable. SPSS's default setting for this is 8.
Decimals - Obviously really, in SPSS this is limited to 16 or fewer. SPSS's default setting for this is 2.
Label - The name setting has some limitations and also needs to be kept relatively short as long names do not show in column headings. The label setting can contain a much longer description of the data which can be very useful, especially when sharing data.
Values - This is used to link numbers to categories where the variable represents a category. For example in some data you may sort between pensioners and workers by their age so that an OAP is a 1 and a worker is a 2. Values then allows 1 to show as an pensioner and 2 to show as a worker.
Missing - This will tell SPSS what to do if there is a missing piece, or pieces, of data in the data set. Clicking on this column will bring up the Missing Values dialogue box which allows you to define the missing data. You may choose to have all missing pieces of data represented by one number - 999999 for example - or represent data that is missing for different reasons in different ways. An example of this would be if people have ignored or missed out a question they could be categorised as 999999, but if they've written Not Applicable they could be categorised as 888888.
Columns - This defines how wide the column is and so how many characters are displayed at the top of the column.
Align - This is the same as in Microsoft Office products and is left, centre or right.
Measure - Last but not least measure is where the way that the data was measured is recorded - so its either nominal, ordinal or scale.
Hopefully you'll find that helpful next time you're working through a Variable View in SPSS.
In this post I will go through each of the column titles to explain little more about what that column is for. Remember that each column in the Variable View window refers to a piece of data in the Data View.
Name - As you can probably guess this is the name of the dataset. In SPSS each name must be unique and the first character must be alphanumeric. You are not permitted to have any spaces in this field.
Type - This column contains details of what type of data your data set contains. In the main most data falls into 2 or 3 categories - String, Numeric or Date- although there are others, for example dollar for currencies.
If you click on the Type box at the top of the column this will open a dialogue box that will allow you to quickly define the data type.
Width - This is just allowing you to define the maximum number of characters that can be entered for the variable. SPSS's default setting for this is 8.
Decimals - Obviously really, in SPSS this is limited to 16 or fewer. SPSS's default setting for this is 2.
Label - The name setting has some limitations and also needs to be kept relatively short as long names do not show in column headings. The label setting can contain a much longer description of the data which can be very useful, especially when sharing data.
Values - This is used to link numbers to categories where the variable represents a category. For example in some data you may sort between pensioners and workers by their age so that an OAP is a 1 and a worker is a 2. Values then allows 1 to show as an pensioner and 2 to show as a worker.
Missing - This will tell SPSS what to do if there is a missing piece, or pieces, of data in the data set. Clicking on this column will bring up the Missing Values dialogue box which allows you to define the missing data. You may choose to have all missing pieces of data represented by one number - 999999 for example - or represent data that is missing for different reasons in different ways. An example of this would be if people have ignored or missed out a question they could be categorised as 999999, but if they've written Not Applicable they could be categorised as 888888.
Columns - This defines how wide the column is and so how many characters are displayed at the top of the column.
Align - This is the same as in Microsoft Office products and is left, centre or right.
Measure - Last but not least measure is where the way that the data was measured is recorded - so its either nominal, ordinal or scale.
Hopefully you'll find that helpful next time you're working through a Variable View in SPSS.
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