I am still a novice ... so easily confused! I was told to compute the means for all explanatory variables (SAS 9.4). But, the variables are all categorical variables. For example, I tried to get the means for the two health reasons (physical and mental health), coded as 1 and 2. I used the following code:   proc means data=onespell mean, std;      class=healthreason;       var=spell_length; run;   This is not giving me what I want. Apparently, because the data is stacked, it includes all observations on a person. I just want a one-person file. My co-investigator responded thus   "Are you looking for the average for persons in your sample?  I am not sure what data is going into the procedure. It appears that the data you are inputting is all the observations on the first spell, so many of those people have multiple observations because they have many months in that spell. If that is the case, then the average will be biased by people who have longer first spells and more observation months. Also, the sample count for the mean will not be people but observation months (many more observation months than people). Lastly, I though you coded health reason as a categorical variable with three categories (0, 1, and 2 or something like that). So that would mean that you are better to look at the proportion of the sample in each category rather an mean value. An average of 0, 1, and 2 values would not give you a meaningful mean value."   Serving only to confuse me more.   Can someone help me unravel this? ... View more

I am trying to merge two files into a new combined file. Both files have many of the same variables. I am getting an error message on merging that says something to the effect "variables are both character and numeric." For example, there is one variable called "extract_month." In one file it is listed as "char" and in the other "numeric".  (no idea how this happened!). I went into the attributes to change one from char to numeric but I can't change. I am only assuming this is the only problem with the merge. Any idea how to fix it? Thanks! ... View more

I realize this is a multi-step process. Two years ago I pulled multiple files out of a longitudinal dataset to create my sampleset. I found out the variable I needed is not among them.   Trying to save file pulled from other location into existing library (to start the long and painful process of merging) but it is not working. I am using the libname command, but my file is not showing up. I realize it is a dead easy thing to do but I am missing something. Can someone help me out? Thanks. ... View more

I am having a problem with a section of code; it runs fine but the frequency table that is generated is missing columns. I end up with 2 and 4 or 1 and 3 or a combination of both (I have been changing the order, etc.) New to SAS coding so hope someone can help.  I suspect I know the problem  if icd9_code1<=0 then healthreason=1;       else if 290<=icd9_code1<=316 then healthreason=4; But do not know how to fix. I have tried everything I can think of! See full section of code below. Any help would be great!   data descriptives2;       set descriptives;   *healthreason 1 is missing, 2 physical health, 3 substance use, 4 mental health; healthreason=0; if icd9_code1<=0 then healthreason=1;       else if 290<=icd9_code1<=316 then healthreason=4; if icd9_code1 in (292 303 304 305) then healthreason=3;                   else healthreason=2;     run;   proc freq data=descriptives2;       tables grantyear*member_gender*healthreason;       title 'health reason by grant year and sex'; ... View more