Some SPSS commands such as RECODE and ALTER TYPE can make irreversible changes to variables. Before using these, I like to clone the variables that I'm about to edit. This allows me to compare the edited to the original versions.
This tutorial presents a super easy tool for making exact clones of variables in SPSS. We'll use bank-clean.sav (partly shown below) for all examples.
Prerequisites & Installation
Installing this tool requires
- SPSS version 24 or higher with
- the SPSS Python 3 essentials installed.
Recent SPSS versions usually meet these requirements.
Download our tool from SPSS_TUTORIALS_CLONE_VARIABLES.spe. You can install it from as shown below.
After completing these steps, you'll find SPSS tutorials - Clone Variables under Transform.
Clone Variables Example I
Let's first clone jtype -short for job type- as illustrated below.
Completing these steps results in the SPSS syntax below. Let's run it.
SPSS_TUTORIALS_CLONE_VARIABLES VARIABLES=jtype
/OPTIONS FIX="c" FIXTYPE=PREFIX ACTION=RUN.
Result
Note that SPSS has now added a new variable to our data: cjtype as shown below.
Except for its name, cjtype is an exact clone of jtype: it has the same
- variable type and format;
- value labels;
- user missing values;
- and so on...
There's one minor issue with our first example: the syntax we just pasted only runs on SPSS installations with our tool installed.
The solution for this is to have the tool print native syntax instead: this syntax is typically (much) longer but it does run on any SPSS installation. Our second examples illustrates how to do just that.
Clone Variables Example II
Let's create native syntax for cloning a couple of different variables, including a string variable and a date variable.
This option has our tool print native syntax into our output window.
Because we chose to print (rather than run) syntax, this is one of the rare occasions at which we click Ok instead of Paste.
Result
Note that we now have native syntax for cloning several variables in our output window.
For actually running this syntax, we can simply copy-paste-run it in a syntax window.The entire syntax is shown below.
STRING clast_name (A30).
RECODE last_name (ELSE = COPY) INTO clast_name.
APPLY DICTIONARY FROM * /SOURCE VARIABLES = last_name /TARGET VARIABLES = clast_name.
RECODE gender (ELSE = COPY) INTO cgender.
APPLY DICTIONARY FROM * /SOURCE VARIABLES = gender /TARGET VARIABLES = cgender.
RECODE dob (ELSE = COPY) INTO cdob.
APPLY DICTIONARY FROM * /SOURCE VARIABLES = dob /TARGET VARIABLES = cdob.
RECODE educ (ELSE = COPY) INTO ceduc.
APPLY DICTIONARY FROM * /SOURCE VARIABLES = educ /TARGET VARIABLES = ceduc.
If our tool creates very long syntax, you could copy it into a separate file and run it from an INSERT command.
Right, I guess that should cover this simple but handy little tool. Hope you'll give it a try and hope you'll find it helpful. If you've any remarks, feel free to throw me a quick comment below.
Thanks for reading!
THIS TUTORIAL HAS 40 COMMENTS:
By Chris on October 28th, 2021
Hi Ruben,
I am on SPSS 27! Happy to move this conversation to email or elsewhere, if that would be better. Thanks so much for your help!
Chris
By Ruben Geert van den Berg on October 29th, 2021
Hi Chris!
I'm somewhat surprised you're having trouble with SPSS 27. I thought issues like these had long been fixed... Anyway:
First off, can you run SPSS as an "administrator" on a Mac? That seems to have solved the trouble for some other students (on Windows, though).
Second, could you try and navigate to /private/var/folders/sw/fqbf7q915cg_h5djjpftbpxm0000gn/T/spss81134/_uibuilder6593174989193087047.tmp/C:\Users\Ruben\Desktop\ and see if this folder (or a parent) exists? And if so, could you manually set its permissions to "write"? That's also been reported as a solution.
If none of that works, I'll contact a friend at IBM on the issue.
Hope that helps!
Ruben
By Chris on November 2nd, 2021
Hi Ruben,
Unfortunately they haven't quite been fixed yet, at least not for me... I tried to run SPSS via the "sudo" command in Terminal but that didn't help. I also found the folder but the OS isn't allowing me to open one of the folders along the way, or even to manually set permissions to "Read & Write" (The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission.). Quite strange, not sure what else to try. If it can't be done, I guess it can't be done?
Thanks for all your help thus far!
Best,
Chris
By Andie on December 23rd, 2022
Thank you so much!
I was able to create a syntax file to fix my data from Qualtrics every time I download a new version, without having to go through and manually fix it every time.
I'm not sure why there's no way to individually reverse code items in a matrix style question on Qualtrics, but I'll be suggesting that...
For now, this works.
By A Barnes on January 15th, 2023
Good