Re: organizing data in SPSS

Posted by Bruce Weaver on Jul 22, 2015; 1:45am
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/organizing-data-in-SPSS-tp5730216p5730218.html

You've answered your own question, as far as I can tell.  I.e., set up a LONG file with the following variables:

ID
Species
Location
Date_and_Time
Temperature
Etc.

Use a DATETIME format for the Date_and_Time variable (http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSLVMB_20.0.0/com.ibm.spss.statistics.help/syn_date_and_time_date_time_formats.htm?lang=en).

It may be that you need to restructure the data for certain analyses you want to do later on.  If so, commands like CASESTOVARS and AGGREGATE will probably be useful.  Look them up (or Google them) and study the examples.

One other thing:  Given the large number of observations per ID, I doubt that the data will be entered by hand.  How are the data being recorded initially?  And how are you getting it into SPSS?

HTH.

jasmine wrote

Hi,
I have been trying to figure this out for days, please help!
I have several months of hourly temperature measurements for numerous subjects (several thousand data points for each participant).
I need to include each and every one of these hourly measurements, date, and time along with the subject id, their location, species etc in the data sheet in such a way that allows for more diverse analyses than just linear regression.
I would really appreciate any help you can give me. Even if it's to tell me it's not possible and why, so I don't keep running in circles...

Thanks so much

Jasmine