When you are recoding a variable on SPSS....?

Question

how do you keep the variable as text and not a number. I am trying to condense the variables extremely liberal, moderately liberal, and liberal into one variable (liberal) ...and also extremely conservative, moderate conservative, and conservative into one variable (conservative). i do this but the text disappears and it just says variable 1, 2, 3 and you can not see when i put it into a frequency table which one is which. the percentages are right but i need the names on there as well. confusing question i know but please help!

Answer 1

It dissapears because you haven't set up value labels. It depends on your version of SPSS, but (a) recode the variable (make sure you select recode into a different varaible rather than "recode into same variable" or you will loose your original information). (b) go into varaible view and click on the values box putting in 1 = liberal, 2= conservative. This should solve the problem.