I have reviewed several documents available on the IBM website (http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27024972) and I could not find anything that mentions specifically the behavior I describe. However, I can tell that this exists (I see it every day when using SPSS).
From what I could notice in reading, SPSS has actually "algorithms" that help identify when a variable is good or bad coded and is mainly used by the SPSS "statistical coach (and perhaps used indirectly by some statistical tests). For example: → None "string variable" is used for a statistical analysis. By marking a variable as type "string", type of measurement automatically switches to "nominal" (type "scale" is not selectablehttps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5204736/SPSS_string.png). In contrast to previous versions, SPSS marked as "unknown" new variables (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5204736/SPSS_unknown.png). → The column properties "role" is defining for some analyzes (can block the use of a variable and defining between dependent (target role) and independent (imput role)). → There are preset conditions to help create variables using transformations or other automated systems.These conditions identified according to current data, if a variable should be coded in a specific way (type, missing values and measurement) → In certain analyzes, SPSS does not allow to use variables with missing cases (but these have not been established in their properties). As the examples above, there are several distributed in the documentation and that together, give the user a "guided use" when using the SPSS user interface. I consider it a good idea to integrate some of PSPPire. It would be appropriate in PSPPireunable to choose the type of "scale", when you set the variable type "string". Also ask them to consider include the new column "role" in PSPP. This would allow a first step, to create databases compatible with analysis in SPSS (interoperability). -- Bastián Díaz > > I didn't know about that. Perhaps we should have it too. > Do you have any more information about it? > Is it described in any manual somewhere that I can lookup ? > _______________________________________________ pspp-dev mailing list pspp-dev@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pspp-dev