Include/Exclude Special Values in a Variable

The addition of special values to be tallied is available from the Tally Attributes for a Table dialog box. It allows you to add rows and columns to your table to tally special values that are not contained in the value sets for your variables or to remove the rows and columns containing special values that are included in the value sets for your variables.

Use custom special values always applies to all variables in a table. You cannot change the special values for a single variable or single subtable.

In the Tally Attributes dialog box users have the following special value options:

To activate the Special Values portion of then menu, check the Use custom special values box (as shown).

After that select the types of special values you want to add to/remove from the value sets of each item in the table by checking the appropriate box.

• NotAppl values counts blanks occurring in the data item.

• Missing values counts special codes defined as "missing" in the data dictionary.

• Refused values counts special codes defined as "refused" in the data dictionary.

• Default values counts the invalid values (shown as asterisks "*" in the data).

• Undefined values counts any values for the item which is not otherwise counted.

Once Use custom special values is checked, this setting overrides any special values in the value sets for items in the table. If Use custom special values is checked, any of the special values that are checked in the tally attributes dialog will be displayed for every item in the table regardless of whether or not the value set for that item contains the special value. In addition, only the special values that are checked in the dialog box will be displayed in the table even if they appear in the value set for the an item in the table. For example, if your value set contains Notappl and you check Use custom special values but leave Notappl unchecked then the columns/rows corresponding to the Notappl value in your value set will be removed from the table. If your value set contains no special values, and you check Use custom special values and Notappl, then a row or column for Notappl will be added for each variable in your table.

Note: Undefined values count includes blanks if Notappl values is not checked. If it is checked then those counts are taken out of the "Undefined values" count and tallied separately. Similar statements apply to other special values.