Syntax for counting cases

1
votes

I work with SPSS and have difficulty finding/generating a syntax for counting cases.

I have about 120 cases and five variables. I need to know the count /proportion of cases where just one, more than one, or all of the cases have a value of 1 (dichotomous variable). Then I need to compute a new variable that shows the number / proportion of cases which include all of the aforementioned cases (also dichotomous).

For example case number one: var1=1, var2=1, var3=1, var4=0, var5=0 --> newvariable=1. Case number two: var1=0, var2=0, var3=0, var4=0, var5=0 --> newvariable=1. And so on...

Can anybody help me with a syntax? Help would much appreciated!

2
spss

2 Answers

2
votes

Here we can use the sum of the variables to determine your conditions. So using a scratch variable that is the sum, we can see if it is equal to 1, more than 1 or 5 in your example.

compute #sum = SUM(var1 to var5).
compute just_one = (#sum = 1).
compute more_one = (#sum > 1).
compute all_one = (#sum = 5).

Similarly, all_one could be computed using the ANY command to evaluate if any zeroes exist, i.e. compute all_one = ANY(0,var1 to var5).. These code snippets assume that var1 to var5 are contiguous in the data frame, if not they just need to be replaced with var1,var2,var3,var4,var5 in all given instances.

1
votes

You could read up on the logical function ANY in the Command Syntax Reference manual, if you negated a test for ANY with "0", then that is effectively a test for all "1"s. Use of the COUNT command would be another approach.