As the title says.
What I'm trying to do is a way to set the labels of a column equal to the value in another column.
A B
1 Car
2 Bike
3 Van
1 Car
3 Van
Column A contains the numeric values. Column B contains the labels.
I want to tell SPSS to take the value 1, and assign it the label "Car" (and so on) as clasically is done manually with:
VALUE LABELS
1 "Car"
2 "Bike"
3 "Van".
Execute.
The syntax below will automatically create a new syntax that adds the value labels as you described.
Before starting, I'm recreating the sample data you posted to demonstrate on:
data list list/A (f1) B (a10).
begin data
1 "Car"
2 "Bike"
3 "Van"
1 " Car"
3 "Van"
end data.
dataset name orig.
Now we get to work:
* first we aggregate the data to get only one line for every value/label pair.
dataset declare agg.
aggregate out=agg /break A B /nn=n.
dataset activate agg.
* now we use the data to create a syntax file with the value label commands.
string cat (a50).
compute cat=concat('"', B, '"').
write out="yourpath\my labels syntax.sps" /"add value labels A ", A, cat, ".".
execute.
* getting back to the original data we can now execute the syntax.
dataset activate orig.
insert file="yourpath\my labels syntax.sps".