Recode continuous variable into a 1 through 5 variable

[NKormanik]

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 · Accepted solution]

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]

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.