Basic data operations in SPSS - ISS - University of Leeds

Basic data operations in SPSS for Windows 17
Version 6 (November 2009)
(ii) Having selected Arithmetic functions, scroll down the list of Functions and Special
Activity 4.6 Click on .
Variables and highlight the RND function. Click on the upward arrow key to select this
function.
(iii) Replace the symbol ?, representing the argument of RND, by the expression (jobtime +
prevexp)/12.
The term jobtime+prevexp represents the total number of months worked. Division by 12
converts this into years. The RND function rounds the result to the nearest integer.
On completion of the expression, the dialog window should resemble Figure 5.
Figure 5: Compute dialog window
The result is shown in Figure 6, below.
Figure 6: Data Editor showing computed variable workyrs
Note that if missing values had been present in either jobtime or prevexp, the result variable
workyrs would have been assigned the system missing value.
Figure 7 shows the SPSS commands used to perform the transformation.
COMPUTE workyrs = RND((jobtime + prevexp) / 12) .
EXECUTE .
Figure 7: COMPUTE command
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