When you say you want to make 0 = non-response, that could mean a couple things.  If you want SPSS to treat 0 as missing for a bunch of variables, use the MISSING VALUES command, like this, replacing varlist with a list of variables:

MISSING VALUES varlist (0).

If the there are sets of contiguous variables in your data set for which you wish to do this, you can use the keyword TO rather than listing all of the variables.  E.g.,

MISSING VALUES v1 TO v8 v12 TO v35 (0).

It may be that you also (or instead) mean that you want to assign a value label to 0, like this:

ADD VALUE LABELS varlist 0 "Non-response".

If you also have values for other values, you can add them in the same command:

ADD VALUE LABELS varlist

  0 "Non-response"

  1 "Stongly disagree"

  2 "Disagree"

  3 "Neutral"

  4 "Agree"

  5 "Stongly agree"

.

You may know that you can also leave ADD off from the command above.  If you omit ADD, any currently existing value labels that are not included in the ADD VALUE LABELS command will be removed.  So if some value labels already exist, it's safer to use ADD VALUE LABELS.  If no labels exist yet, you can safely shorten it to VALUE LABELS. 

For more info and examples, click on Help > Command Syntax Reference, and look it up.

When you say you want to make 0 = non-response, that could mean a couple things.  If you want SPSS to treat 0 as missing for a bunch of variables, use the MISSING VALUES command, like this, replacing varlist with a list of variables:

MISSING VALUES varlist (0).

If the there are sets of contiguous variables in your data set for which you wish to do this, you can use the keyword TO rather than listing all of the variables.  E.g.,

MISSING VALUES v1 TO v8 v12 TO v35 (0).

It may be that you also (or instead) mean that you want to assign a value label to 0, like this:

ADD VALUE LABELS varlist 0 "Non-response".

If you also have values for other values, you can add them in the same command:

ADD VALUE LABELS varlist

  0 "Non-response"

  1 "Stongly disagree"

  2 "Disagree"

  3 "Neutral"

  4 "Agree"

  5 "Stongly agree"

.

You may know that you can also leave ADD off from the command above.  If you omit ADD, any currently existing value labels that are not included in the ADD VALUE LABELS command will be removed.  So if some value labels already exist, it's safer to use ADD VALUE LABELS.  If no labels exist yet, you can safely shorten it to VALUE LABELS. 

For more info and examples, click on Help > Command Syntax Reference, and look it up.

Dear Pamela,

A better way to handle non-responses might be to delete all your zeros as SPSS handles missing data automatically and reports on it in its output.

I disagree with Peter's suggestion to delete the zeroes and use the system missing value.  Art Kendall has posted the the SPSSX-L mailing on this topic many times.  One of his nice posts is linked below.  Here are the key points from Art's post:

• A system-missing value should be reserved for the situation where the

program cannot do what you are telling it to do.  System-missing values occur when the program is unable to read input the way you tell it to read it or it cannot do a transformation that you tell it to do.

• User-missing values say that there is a known reason why there is not a

valid value there.

HTH.

http://spssx-discussion.1045642.n5.nabble.com/Value-labels-for-missing-values-tp1085018p1085019.html

No you cannot do that. The algorithm would assume a zero is a response of zero and this value will be taken into consideration when computing parameters etc, which is wrong. Thus, you need to assign a missing value like a . in your data set.

Zainudin, if you tell SPSS (via the MISSING VALUES command) that 0 is a (user-defined) missing value, SPSS will treat it as a missing value.  See the example I posted earlier in this thread.  And see the links below.

http://www.theanalysisfactor.com/3-pieces-of-spss-syntax-to-keep-handy/

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSLVMB_20.0.0/com.ibm.spss.statistics.help/syn_missing_values_examples.htm

Thank you all for your suggestions, Bruce Weavers response is what I needed but thank you all.

ADD VALUE LABELS varlist 0 "Non-response.

If you also have values for other values, you can add them in the same command:

ADD VALUE LABELS varlist

  0 "Non-response"

  1 "Stongly disagree"

  2 "Disagree"

  3 "Neutral"

  4 "Agree"

  5 "Stongly agree"

I have entered data into SPSS but need to know how to make zero equal a non responses in SPSS, thank you for your help? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/I_have_entered_data_into_SPSS_but_need_to_know_how_to_make_zero_equal_a_non_responses_in_SPSS_thank_you_for_your_help [accessed Feb 27, 2016].