User Guide

122
Chapter 6
The Visual Bander main dialog box provides the following information for the
scanned variables:
Scanned Variable List. Displays the variables you selected in the initial dialog box.
You c an s ort
the list by measurement level (scale or ordinal) or by variable label or
name by clicking on the column headings.
Cases Scanned. Indicates the number of cases scanned. All scanned cases without
user-missing or system-missing values for the selected variable are used to generate
the distri
bution of values used in calculations in the Visual Bander, including the
histogram displayed in the main dialog box and cutpoints based on percentiles or
standard deviation units.
Missing Values. Indicates the number of scanned cases with user-missing or
system-m
issing values. Missing values are not included in any of the banded
categories. For more information, see “User-Missing Values in the Visual Bander” on
p. 128.
Current Variable. The name and variable label (if any) for the currently selected
variabl
e that will be used as the basis for the new, banded variable.
Banded V
ariable.
Name and optional variable label for the new, banded variable.
 Name. Y
ou must enter a name for the new variable. Variable names must be
unique and must follow SPSS variable naming rules. For more information, see
“Variable Names” in Chapter 5 on p. 78.
 Label. You can enter a descriptive variable label up to 255 characters long. The
default
variable label is the variable label (if any) or variable name of the source
variable with (Banded) appended to the end of the label.
Minimum and Maximum. Minimum and maximum values for the currently selected
variab
le, based on the scanned cases and not including values defined as user-missing.
Nonmis
sing Values.
The histogram displays the distribution of nonmissing values for
the currently selected variable, based on the scanned cases.
 After you define bands for the new variable, vertical lines on the histogram are
displa
yed to indicate the cutpoints that define bands.