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Selecting a cut-off score in SPSS

I have 5 variables for one questionnaire about social support. I want to define the group with low vs. high support. According to the authors low support is defined as a sum score <= 18 AND two items scoring <= 3. It would be great to get a dummy variable which shows which people are low vs high in support.

How can I do this in the syntax?

Thanks ;)

Solution

  • Assuming your variables are named Var1, Var2 .... Var5, and that they are consecutive in the dataset, this should work:

    recode Var1 to Var5 (1 2 3=1)(4 thr hi=0) into L1 to L5.
compute LowSupport = sum(Var1 to Var5) <= 18 and sum(L1 to L5)>=2.
execute.

    New variable LowSupport will have value 1 for rows that have the parameters you defined and 0 for other rows. Note: If your variables are not consecutive you'll have to list all of them instead of using Var1 to var5.