IBM® SPSS® Amos™ 28

This list provides a choice of rules that you can use for recoding the variable that is selected in the Original Variables list. Alternatively, instead of recoding a variable, you can choose to treat it as a frequency variable. The choices for recoding rule are:

No recoding

Do not recode the selected variable. Amos will read the data values exactly as recorded in the data file.

Customized

You can specify a recoded value for each distinct value of the selected variable. For example, you can replace "a" with "1", "b" with "2", and so on. Any recoding rule can be specified in this way. All of the other choices for recoding rule are simply shortcuts that are available for special cases.

Ordered-categorical

It is assumed that there is an underlying continuous numerical variable whose range of values (minus infinity to plus infinity) is divided up into non-overlapping intervals. By contrast, the observed measurement is categorical, taking on values, say, "a", "b", .... The value of the underlying numeric variable is not directly observable, but it is related to the observed, categorical variable. When the underlying numeric value falls into the lowest interval, the value "a" is observed. When the underlying numeric value falls into the second lowest interval, "b" is observed. And so on.

Click Details to specify the number of intervals, the boundaries between the intervals, and the mapping of intervals to observed values.

Numeric, continuous

This choice is only meaningful when the selected variable is numeric. The recoding consists of calculating some numeric function of values in the data file. Click Details to specify the function to be used to calculate recoded values.

Numeric, rounded

This choice is only appropriate when the selected variable is numeric with values that have been rounded off to some specified precision, say to the nearest whole number or to the nearest multiple of 10. As an example, suppose that you have income data, with incomes rounded to the nearest $1000. Then an income recorded as $97000 will be treated as between $96500 and $97500. In other words, "97000" will be replaced with "96500<<97500". Click Details to specify how the values in the data file have been rounded.

Numeric, truncated

This choice is only meaningful when the selected variable is numeric with values that have been truncated to some specified precision, say to the nearest whole number or to the nearest multiple of 10. As an example, suppose that you have income data, with incomes truncated to the nearest $1000. Then an income recorded as $97000 will be treated as between $97000 and $98000. In other words, "97000" will be replaced with "97000<<98000". Click Details to specify how the values in the data file have been truncated.