This goes with homework 21 SSPS assignment 2 Computing varia

This goes with homework 2.1 SSPS assignment 2

Computing variables and constructing indexes

For many reasons, researchers may be interested in computing a new variables or creating indexes. For example, one may be interested to construct an index health by combining diet, exercise, stress management into one variable. SPSS allows us to create index of several variables.

To perform the computation, follow these procedures. As an example, we will create an index of abortion combing two abortion variables-abany (abortion women want for any reason) and abpoor (low income-can’t afford children)

From the SPSS menu, select:    Transform à Compute

The dialogue box below will appear.   

Type the name you wish to assign to the new variable in the “Target variable” box

perform computation in the “Numeric Expression” box. Click on the parentheses ( ) on the keyboard provided to send it to Numeric Expression” box.   

Select the variable abany, click arrow to insert it in the Numeric Expression box, as well as an addition sign, followed by the abpoor variable into parentheses

Put a division sign / after the parentheses and click (or type) number 2. This yield to the average.

You have created a new variable which is appeared at the end of Data View and Variable View.

You can now perform a descriptive statistics on the new variable to see the frequencies.

Analyze à Descriptive Statistics à frequencies à

The new variable Abortion

Abortion

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid

602

40.3

40.3

40.3

1

331

22.2

22.2

62.4

2

433

29.0

29.0

91.4

NA

128

8.6

8.6

100.0

Total

1494

100.0

100.0

Solution

we assign valid as numeric 3 and NA as numeric 0

then we get the descriptive measure of mean, median and standard deviation as,

x   freq mean SD median
3   602   2.01004 0.983413 1.5
1   331          
2   433          
0   128