CREATING VARIABLES IN SPSS

In this post, we will be discussing that how one can create a variable in SPSS. The reason for creating a new variable is that often in Social Sciences, we have a variable which we measure through using a specific instrument/questionnaire which contain more than one question. All questions in a specific instrument/questionnaire represents the same variable for example 'Service Quality' is a variable measured by 21 set of questions developed by a specialist. Job satisfaction is measured by 3 items. Emotional intelligence is measured by 10 statement questionnaire. As all the questions/statements represents same variable, therefore, we need to calculate one variable out of those questions/statements belonging to one variable. For more clarification, consider the following example.

A questionnaire/instrument is developed by Cammann et al.(1983 to measure the concept of 'Job Satisfaction'. The said instrument is as under.
Job satisfaction
1. All in all, I am satisfied with my job.
2. In general, I like my job
3. In general, I like working here.
The above questionnaire is used to measure the respondents response about their job satisfaction. Lets say that you have input all these statements as individual variables in SPSS-Variable View Window. (Consider screenshot  for clarification)

Now you have entered the variables and their respective values in the 'variable view' so now you are in position to start entering the data.

So you have put the data for 20 respondents for the three statements referring to 'Job satisfaction' concept. Now you want to calculate the variable by averaging the responses, so perform the following command.
Transform----Compute Variable
In Target variable, write the name of the variable i.e. Job Satisfaction. Then in right side, select the function group--Statistical--and in Functions and special Variables--Mean

Now in Numeric Expression box, Mean will appear along with brackets. Now click on each statement given in left hand side and drag them to those brackets and make sure that all three statements are separated by commas and closed by brackets.

Now click on OK button and go to the 'Data View'. Here you will find a newly created variable along with its average/mean values.

By using the same 'Data Transformation' option, we can also create other variables with some other functions like Summation, Maximum and so on.
So that's it for Data Transformation/ Creating variables in SPSS. For more details, view my other posts.

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