Goal: Standardize a column of "Age" data (i.e. into years old / months old) using SPSS / SPSS Syntax.
Examples of Cell contents (1 cell is denoted by contents in parentheses):
"7" (assume this is years)
"4 months"
"5 yr"
"13 mo"
"1.5 yr"
"1 yr 3 mo"
"5/21/2014" (this is date of birth)
"12 days"
"22y"
"1y3m"
"6 y/o"
"1 year 7 months"
as you smallest unit is months, you could create a frequencies table and store it in EXCEL. In EXCEL, you have a second column to have the numerical value for the new variable. In the third column you concatenate the information in the fist two columns to a SYNTAX line. The result of the concatenation in EXCEL should read " IF (StringVar = '4 months' ) NumVar = 4. You can then copy this into an SPSS Syntax and your done. But the conversion required human expertise. It is a warning: if you want data that should be numerical, never allow respondents to be free to write. It really messes up data and takes a lot of time and effort to correct.
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