Merry christmas everyone
I have a stats question please, how do we recode gender to be used as a variable?
I am learning spss and would really appreciate any tip.
Thanks
satchi

can't you use 1 for male, 2 for female?

hi joyce
Im just a beginner, it says that STring variables cannot be used, I also did the 1 and 2 thing.
thanks satchi

Hey Satchi- I have just used 0 for male, 1 for female. But first, you need to go to 'variable view' (click on the tab on the bottom left of the screen) and change 'type' to 'numeric', rather than 'string'. Then it should let you enter the numbers! Hope that makes sense...that's on SPSS 16 by the way, but I think it's not changed much over the different versions. KB

You are right K. Never thought that could be the problem.

I have been told that there is a very good dummy's guide to SPSS, which may be of use, apparently one of the lecturers here swears by it!. I think part of the problem is that you have to know what you want the program to do before you know what you want it to do. Everything has to be set up just right otherwise the program just says 'no' - or it produces some rubbish result. I think Access is also a pain because of this. If you are having problems with the data you are trying to put in, forget that just for a moment, and put in data that you know will work, for example some numerical stuff ,to give yourself a bit of confidence. Then set up some coded stuff, maybe names, months of the year etc, and see how you get on with manipulating that. if you can get it to do what you want when you know what the result should be, it will help... failing that, see if your uni has a tame maths person, and consult them, they love this thing.:$ :-)

hi again joyce and K, thanks for your replies, I just found something like that in a chapter in logistic regression. *sigh* I'm going to read it tonight.

satchi