This tutorial covers some obvious and some less obvious functions for editing numeric variables. You can follow along with this tutorial by downloading and opening hospital.sav. They syntax we'll use can be copy-pasted or downloaded here.

Specifying User Missing Values

This tutorial will only use the last 2 variables in the data.These are ordinal variable so, strictly, calculations are not allowed on them. However, this is common practice nevertheless as explained in Assumption of Equal Intervals. Before doing anything else, we first specify 6 as a user missing value by running the line of syntax below.

SPSS Additions

Numeric values can be added in SPSS by simply using the + operator. The syntax below gives an example by computing add_1 as the addition of food_rating and facilities_rating

One thing to keep in mind is that if any of the operands (mostly “input variables”) is a missing value, the result will a system missing value. This can be avoided by using the SUM function instead, which we'll discuss later.

Valid + Missing Value = Missing Value

SPSS Subtractions

Subtracting numeric values in SPSS is straightforward and can be done with the - operator as shown in the syntax below.

SPSS Multiplications

Numeric values can be multiplied in SPSS with the * operator. The syntax below demonstrates this.

SPSS Divisions

Simply use the / operator for division in SPSS. The syntax below gives an example.

SPSS Exponentiations

Exponentiating in SPSS is done by the ** operator. The syntax below gives some examples. Note that you can also compute (square or other) roots by exponentiation as shown in the second example.

SPSS SQRT Function

Computing square roots in SPSS can be done by exponentiating a number to the power 0.5 as hinted at by the previous syntax example. For the less mathematically inclined, SPSS also has the SQRT function. For the sake of completeness, we'll demonstrate it below.

SPSS RND Function

Rounding numbers in SPSS is done with the RND function. RND takes an optional second argument, which is the nearest value to round to. Like so, you can round to the nearest quarter point (second example below) or tenfold (third example).
If the second argument is omitted, values will be rounded to the nearest integer (first example). Note that the syntax below uses some variables that were computed in the previous examples.

SPSS RND function can round values to integers, quarter points and tenfolds

SPSS RND Syntax Examples

SPSS TRUNC Function

Truncating numbers basically means rounding them down to the nearest integer or other value. SPSS includes a TRUNC function for doing so. It takes an optional second argument, which is the nearest value to which to truncate. Like so, you may truncate a number to the nearest tenfold (third example below) are quarter value (second example).
If the second argument is omitted, numbers will be truncated to the nearest integer. Note that the syntax below uses some variables that were computed in the previous examples.

SPSS TRUNC Syntax Examples

SPSS MOD Function

The modulus function returns the remainder of a number after subtracting a second number from it as many times as possible. Note that it's basically the opposite of truncating; instead of throwing away the remainder, we now throw away everything except for the remainder.
In SPSS, MOD(a,b), means “subtract b from a as many times as possible and return the remainder of a”. If that still sounds a little abstract, try running the two examples in the syntax below. Note that it uses some variables from the previous examples. The results are also shown in the screenshot that follows.

SPSS MOD Syntax Examples