topic combine variables across observations in SAS Programming

combine variables across observations

sydneyb — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:25:10 GMT

Hi all, I am trying to combine variables across multiple observations. I have four different surveys that all ask the same questions on a likert scale and I would like to combine the answers into one variable.

My data looks like this:

ID a_question b_question c_question d_question

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 1

6 2

I would like my dataset to look like this:

ID abcd_question

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 1

6 2

Thanks for any insight!

Re: combine variables across observations

ChrisNZ — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 01:28:01 GMT

Use the coalesce function.

abcd_question=coalesce(a_question,b_question,c_question,d_question);

Re: combine variables across observations

sydneyb — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 13:40:40 GMT

That worked, thanks so much! I thought I had tried that before but I must have had a typo or some other syntax misstep.