topic Re: Recode continuous variable into a 1 through 5 variable in SAS Procedures

Recode continuous variable into a 1 through 5 variable

NKormanik — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 23:19:04 GMT

Please suggest a way of recoding a continuous variable into a 'Likert Scale' variable.

Lowest 20% should be translated to 1.

Next 20% should be translated to 2.

Top 20% should be translated to 5.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Nicholas Kormanik

ballardw — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 23:29:57 GMT

Proc means, summary or univariate on the data requesting the appropriate percentiles.

Code if/then/else using those values OR a custom format assigning the values 1 to 5 (or possibly more meaningful text) to the raw values.

Or possibly Proc Rank using groups=5 to create a new variable but you would have to add 1 to the value as rank will create 0 to 4 for the value.

NKormanik — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 23:44:28 GMT

Perhaps using 0 to 4 would work, too, as opposed to 1 to 5. I don't see that it would make any difference. So Proc Rank may be the one to use.

I would greatly prefer not having to put in specific values of the raw data, as I have a hundred such variables to recode.