How to Create New Binary Variable(s)

This article describes how to create new binary variables from existing data. Binary variables are ones which can take two values, 1 and 0, with the possibility of a missing value for cases that do not have data.

For numeric data, the new binary variables correspond to cases which have a value greater than 0. You can customize this to other threshhold values as needed.

For categorical data, the new binary variables correspond to the categories in the data. When you select categorical questions as your input, the tool creates binary variables with one variable for each category. When multiple questions are selected, the new binary variables combine the categories from those questions.

Use cases:

1. As a user I want to combine Top Of Mind Awareness with Other Awareness to create a Total Awareness variable set.

2. As a user, my coding team have coded the “Other/Specify” responses to a question as a separate set of variables, and I want to combine those responses with my original question.

3. As a user I have a Binary - Multi (Compact) variable set in Displayr and I want to convert it to Binary - Multi.

For example, the tool creates binary variables from existing data that looks like this:

... to table that looks like:

Requirements

• You are required to select at least one question of the types Numeric, Numeric - Multi, Numeric - Grid, Nominal: Mutually exclusive categories, Nominal - Multi: Grid with unordered categories, Ordinal, Ordinal - Multi: Grid with ordered categories, see Variable Sets for more detail.
• If multiple variable sets are selected, they should either all be numeric or all categorical

Method

To create new binary variable(s):

1. Select the variables in the Data Sets tree.
2. Either hover over any variable in your Data Sets tree > Plus (+) > Insert Variable(s) > Ready-Made New Variable(s) > Binary Variable(s) or else from the toolbar menu, select Anything > Data > Variables > New > Ready-Made New Variable(s) > Binary Variable(s).
   
   Click Yes, or No, or Cancel if you receive the following message regarding treatment of incomplete data:
   
   If you click Cancel, no variables will be created.
   
   
3. This will create a new variable set in the Data Sets tree.
   
   
4. Drag the new variable set onto the page.
   
   
   
   

Next

How to Flatten Question(s)