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Ron and I discussed
this case off the list. The warning did not reflect a PROXSCAL bug. PROXSCAL
has some requirements for the SourceID variable that are not present in
ALSCAL. In Ron's case, the critical requirement was that the value labels
assigned for the SourceID variable must also be valid variable names. The
problem was fixed by replacing spaces within two of the value labels with
underscores to make those labels conform to the rules for variable names.
I have pasted Resolutions 89135
and 89148 from the Support web site ( http://support.spss.com
) below my signature. Resolution 89135 directly addresses Ron's situation,
while Resolution 89148 addresses another SourceID requirement that PROXSCAL
users might encounter, i.e. the requirement that SourceID values be sequential
integers from 1 to the number of sources. .
David Matheson
Statistical Support
SPSS, an IBM company
******************************************
Resolution
number: 89135 Created on: Apr 20 2010 Last
Reviewed on: Apr 21 2010
Problem Subject: PROXSCAL fails with warning "invalid source
name was used as value label of SOURCEID"
Problem Description:
I am trying to run the PROXSCAL procedure for multidimensional scaling
(MDS) in SPSS/PASW Statistics. I have multiple sources for the proximity
matrices and wish to run an Individual Differences model. The variable
which identifies the source of each matrix is named Country, for example.
Each source has a numeric value and a value label with the name of the
country. When I run PROXSCAL with COUNTRY identified as the Source variable,
PROXSCAL fails to execute and the following warning is issued.
'Warnings
An invalid source name was used as value label of SOURCEID. Source names
should be valid variable names.
This command is not executed.'
If i use the same source variable in the ALSCAL procedure, the analysis
runs and produces separate MDS output for each source. Why is PROXSCAL
rejecting the SOURCEID variable? Does it reflect a bug in PROXSCAL?
Resolution Subject: SourceID
values must have value labels that are also valid variable names
Resolution Description:
PROXSCAL has some rules for the characteristics of the SOURCEID variable
which do not apply to the source variable in ALSCAL. Therefore, PROXSCAL
might reject a source variable that ALSCAL accepts. These rules are stated
in the TABLE subcommand section of the PROXSCAL chapter in the Command
Syntax Reference (which is available in Statistics from Help>Command
Syntax Reference:
"Source identifying variable. The values specify the source number
and must be integers between 1 and the number of sources, inclusive. The
value labels of this variable are used to identify sources on other subcommands.
These value labels must comply with variable name conventions. Omitting
a value label causes PROXSCAL to use the default label SRC_n, where n is
the number of the source."
So, PROXSCAL requires the value labels for the SOURCEID variable (COUNTRY
in this example) to conform to the rules of variable names in Statistics,
This requirement of value labels is not in force for value labels generally
or for most procedures in Statistics. You can also find the rules for variable
names in the Universals chapter of the Command Syntax Reference or by entering
"Variable Names, Rules" in the Index tab under Help>Topics.
A common error in this situation involves value labels that include a space,
which would normally present no problems for value labels. For example,
"United Kingdom" would be a valid value label for most purposes
in Statistics but would trigger the error in question if used as a value
label for the SOURCEID variable in PROXSCAL. This error could be easily
fixed by replacing the space in the label with an underscore, as in "United_Kingdom".
See the variable naming rules in the Help menu, as described above, to
resolve more complex violations of the variable naming rules.
See Resolution 89148 for another PROXSCAL SourceID rule which may trigger
an error with SourceID variables that are accepted by ALSCAL. |
******************************************
Resolution
number: 89148 Created on: Apr 20 2010 Last
Reviewed on: Apr 22 2010
Problem Subject: PROXSCAL fails with warning "invalid value
of the sourceID variable"
Problem Description:
I am trying to run the PROXSCAL procedure for multidimensional scaling
(MDS) in SPSS/PASW Statistics. I have multiple sources for the proximity
matrices and wish to run an Individual Differences model. The variable
which identifies the source of each matrix is named Country, for example.
Each source has a numeric value and a value label with the name of the
country. When I run PROXSCAL with COUNTRY identified as the SourceID variable,
PROXSCAL fails to execute and the following warning is issued.
"Invalid value of the source id variable or invalid order or number
of records were detected in the matrix input file. Values of the source
id variable must be consecutive integer numbers starting with one. For
each sourceIDd value, there must be as many records as there are variables
following VARNAME_.
This command is not executed."
If i use the same source variable in the ALSCAL procedure, the analysis
runs and produces separate MDS output for each source. Why is PROXSCAL
rejecting the SOURCEID variable? Does it reflect a bug in PROXSCAL?
Resolution Subject: SourceID
values must be sequential, from 1 to the number of sources, with no skipped
values
Resolution Description:
PROXSCAL has some rules for the characteristics of the SOURCEID variable
which do not apply to the source variable in ALSCAL. Therefore, PROXSCAL
might reject a source variable that ALSCAL accepts. These rules are stated
in the TABLE subcommand section of the PROXSCAL chapter in the Command
Syntax Reference guide (which is available in Statistics from Help>Command
Syntax Reference":
"Source identifying variable. The values specify the source number
and must be integers between 1 and the number of sources, inclusive. The
value labels of this variable are used to identify sources on other subcommands.
These value labels must comply with variable name conventions. Omitting
a value label causes PROXSCAL to use the default label SRC_n, where n is
the number of the source."
Problem 1 was resolved by autorecoding cntry_2 into country_seq, which
had sequential values from 1 to 20.
If some numbers skipped in the range of source values, autorecode the source
variable to provide unbroken sequence of source values
SourceID values must be sequential integers from 1 to the number of sources.
If a value in that sequence is skipped in the data file, PROXSCAL will
print the warning described above and fail to execute. For example, if
the possible values of COUNTRY went from 1 to 25, but values 12 and 15
were unobserved in the current data set, the warning would be triggered.
A workaround is to use the Autorecode procedure to recode COUNTRY into
a new variable (COUNTRY_SEQ, for example) with values from 1 to 23. The
value labels from the original, observed COUNTRY values will be applied
to the corresponding new values in COUNTRY_SEQ. Country_SEQ would be used
as the SourceID variable when creating the proximities matrix and running
PROXSCAL.
The Autorecode procedure is available in the Transform menu in Statistics.
An example syntax command is:
AUTORECODE VARIABLES=country
/INTO country_seq
/PRINT.
See Resolution 89135 for another SourceID rule which may trigger a PROXSCAL
error with SourceID variables that are accepted by ALSCAL. |
Hi all,
could somebody point out what the problem is. I am trying to run a proxscal
mds in spss17. i have data from various sources and would like to run
separate mds for each source. i enter the source variable in the appropriate
box, but i always get this message:
'Warnings
An invalid source name was used as value label of SOURCEID. Source names
should be valid variable names.
This command is not executed.'
If i use the same source variable in alscal, the analysis runs and produces
separate mds for each source. therefore, there should be no problem with
the
source id.
what am i doing wrong? is there a trick to get this running or is this
a bug
in proxscal?
thanks a lot in advance and happy easter everyone.
ron
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