Re: "tags" in PSPP - can a variable have multiple values for the same case?

[Alan Mead]

As I see it, you have two choices, neither of which are simple,
error-proof or quick.

You could try to search for keywords and create a new variable that has
a numeric value that you label "Nidersachsen" when you detect "Hannover"
or "Niedersachsen".  I assume this would be error-prone and tedious. 
Maybe Germans never make typos, but you might be able to out-smart typos
with soundex (or a better, ideally germanized algorithm).  See here for
PSPP syntax:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.soft-sys.stat.spss/Ry-bwrV8pFY

When I have free-response data that I want to recode, I do a frequencies
of the data and export the unique responses to a spreadsheet and then
manually assign codes to the results.  Then I construct SPSS/PSPP code
to recode the data to the desired codes.  If the number of unique
free-responses are a lot less than 360 then you have saved yourself some
time.  By "construct SPSS/PSPP code to recode the data to the desired
codes" I mean let's say that your free responses are in Column A
(starting in A2) and you have manually entered the desired recodes in
Column B (starting in B2).  And in SPSS your variable is called V1 and
you want to recode it into V1_recoded, then in cell C2 I insert a macro
like:

="if V1 = '"&A2&"' V1_recoded="&B2&"."

So, if A2 held "Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany, Europe" and B2 held 1
then this would create the SPSS/PSPP syntax:

if V1 = 'Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany, Europe' V1_recoded=1.

Copy C2 down for all rows with data and then paste all the cells of
column C into PSPP as a long block of IF statements.  Add an execute at
the end and run it.

-Alan


On 1/16/2015 2:54 PM, Benjamin Oppermann wrote:
> Hello,
> This is basically a question about cleaning up my data:
> I made a survey where for some of the questions, the answer could be any
> number of keywords. The informant could be more or less specific to
> their liking. This was intended to work like tags (they are
> comma-separated), but we didn't consider that they would still end up in
> the same column of the output.
> This means, for example the values for "place of origin" could be as
> precise as "Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany, Europe" or "Hannover,
> Germany", or just "Hannover". All in the same variable! 
> I currently have this variable specified as a string in PSPP, which
> means each represents a different value for PSPP.
> I want to achieve an outcome where all these values would read the same,
> i.e. the region, "Nidersachsen" in this example. Since my sample
> includes ~360 cases, I'd like to find a way to do this automatically.
> I might be able to do it in another program like a spreadsheet
> application or GoogleRefine/OpenRefine, but maybe do you know a way to
> recode this variable in PSPP? Any suggestions?
> Regards,
> Ben
>
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Alan D. Mead, Ph.D.
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