Another date conversion question

[FernandezLanier, Adriana (DCJS)]

Good morning. I hit another date snag in my data set. There is a variable called admission date in the file but it’s in a numeric format and not a date function. For example, the date, Nov. 8, 2006, appears as 20061108 in the file. The month, day, and year have been extracted (2006,11,8). How can I convert the numeric format version into a date format or even use the month, day, year variable to compute a date variable.  Once I have this date I then can calculate time differences. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Adriana

 

 

 

 

 

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[aschoff]

Hi, 

I think one option is to first convert your original numeric format (20061108) into a string format and the use the "Date and Time Wizard" from the menu to transform this string variable into a date variable. You just have to select the correct input and desired output format. With the resulting variable you should be able to make further date calculations.

Robinson

On 19.02.2010, at 14:28, FernandezLanier, Adriana (DCJS) wrote:

Good morning. I hit another date snag in my data set. There is a variable called admission date in the file but it’s in a numeric format and not a date function. For example, the date, Nov. 8, 2006, appears as 20061108 in the file. The month, day, and year have been extracted (2006,11,8). How can I convert the numeric format version into a date format or even use the month, day, year variable to compute a date variable.  Once I have this date I then can calculate time differences. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Adriana

 

 

 

 

 

P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

 

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[Marta Garcia-Granero]

FernandezLanier, Adriana (DCJS) wrote:

>
> Good morning. I hit another date snag in my data set. There is a
> variable called admission date in the file but it’s in a numeric
> format and not a date function. For example, the date, Nov. 8, 2006,
> appears as 20061108 in the file. The month, day, and year have been
> extracted (2006,11,8). How can I convert the numeric format version
> into a date format or even use the month, day, year variable to
> compute a date variable. Once I have this date I then can calculate
> time differences. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks, Adriana
>

Hi

If you don't want to transform your numeric variable into a string, you
can use this approach (provided that all your dates have 8 digits: 4 for
the year, 2 for the month and 2 for the day):

* Sample dataset *.
DATA LIST LIST/DatesN(F8).
BEGIN DATA
20061108
END DATA.

* Temporary extraction of the components *.
COMPUTE #Years = TRUNC(DatesN/10000) .
COMPUTE #Months=TRUNC(DatesN/100)-#Years*100.
COMPUTE #Days=DatesN-#Years*10000-#Months*100.

* Compute date *.
COMPUTE TrueDate = DATE.DMY(#Days, #Months, #Years).
VARIABLE LEVEL TrueDate (SCALE).
* I have selected yyyy-mm-dd as format, but there are other formats like
dd-mm-yyyy *.
FORMATS TrueDate (SDATE10).
VARIABLE WIDTH TrueDate(10).

* See result *.
LIST.

HTH,
Marta GG

--
For miscellaneous SPSS related statistical stuff, visit:
http://gjyp.nl/marta/

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