creating new variable from a variable with names

[joachimg]

I'm creating a new variable, d_religion2 from an existing variable, d_religion. All I'm trying to do is redefine the categories of the variable (should be super easy, right?). In the dataset I'm working with, the categories of d_religion are words - catholic, evangelical, jewish, etc. - I attached a screen shot of a table of d_religion so you can see what I mean. How do I write that in an if/then statement? Because writing something like "if d_religion=catholic then d_religion2=christian;" for example, doesn't work. Hopefully this is clear......let me know if you have questions. I know this is probably simple haha. Thanks!

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

Since I never download attachments, I'll take a guess here

data want;
    set have;
    if upcase(d_religion)='CATHOLIC' then d_religion2='CHRISTIAN';
    else if upcase(d_religion)='BUDDHIST' then d_religion2='INDIAN';
    /* And so on */
run;

The proper way to provide sample data is https://blogs.sas.com/content/sastraining/2016/03/11/jedi-sas-tricks-data-to-data-step-macro/

[joachimg]

Amazing! Glad it was a command I haven't learned yet and not just me being dumb..... thank you so much! 🙂