Syntax to determine the display order of randomized questions

[Colleen]

Hello all-

I have ten variables in a survey data file representing questions that were
shown in a random order to respondents, and I want to analyze the data based
on the order in which they were displayed.  I have timestamp data (in
milliseconds) for each, and simply need to assign the number of the first
question shown to POS_1, the number of the second question shown to POS_2, etc.

My approach to POS_1 was to take the minimum of the 10 timestamp values and
assign the corresponding question number to POS_1, which was
straightforward. To do this for all of the position variables I would need
to take into account ALL of the previously determined positions, in order to
know which subset of timestamps to take the minimum value from.  I'm sure
there is a much easier way to accomplish this-- any suggestions would be
greatly appreciated!

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[David Marso]

Hi Colleen,
See if this one floats your boat ;-)  Easier to just butcher the data and reorganize it rather than doing an inline sort of the data (however I did write such a beast a long time ago  and it's probably still around somewhere on the internet;-).
HTH, David
---
*simulate some data.
input program.
numeric ts01 to ts10 var01 to var10 .
loop caseid=1 to 1000.
do repeat ms=ts01 to ts10 / var=var01 to var10.
compute ms=uniform(86400*1000).
compute var = trunc(uniform(10)).
end repeat.
end case.
end loop.
end file.
end input program.



**Actual program .
VARSTOCASES   /MAKE ms FROM ts01 TO ts10  /MAKE var FROM var01 TO var10  /INDEX = Index1(10)  /KEEP =  caseid.
RANK ms BY caseid.
CASESTOVARS  /ID = caseid  /INDEX = index1  /GROUPBY = VARIABLE .  

---

Colleen wrote

Hello all-

I have ten variables in a survey data file representing questions that were
shown in a random order to respondents, and I want to analyze the data based
on the order in which they were displayed.  I have timestamp data (in
milliseconds) for each, and simply need to assign the number of the first
question shown to POS_1, the number of the second question shown to POS_2, etc.

My approach to POS_1 was to take the minimum of the 10 timestamp values and
assign the corresponding question number to POS_1, which was
straightforward. To do this for all of the position variables I would need
to take into account ALL of the previously determined positions, in order to
know which subset of timestamps to take the minimum value from.  I'm sure
there is a much easier way to accomplish this-- any suggestions would be
greatly appreciated!

=====================
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[e-mail] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
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