This document provides instructions for counting the occurrences of values within variables in an IBM SPSS dataset. It demonstrates counting the number of "Strongly Positive" responses across six satisfaction survey questions to calculate a total for each respondent. The steps shown include using the "Transform > Count Values within cases" procedure to create a new variable called "Count_Strongly_Positive" that contains the count. It also notes that cases can be conditionally selected for counting using an "If cases" dialog box.

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Tech Tips - Count Occurrences
within a case in IBM SPSS Statistics

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Tech Tips Why count occurrences of
values within cases?
• You might have a satisfaction survey that contains a lot of questions
with the same scale
– You can use this procedure to calculate the total number of “Very Satisfied” responses a
respondent gave across a number of questions
• You might have a survey that contains a list of magazines where each
magazine is a variable and each respondent indicates Yes or No for
each magazine
– You can use this procedure to calculate the total number of magazines each person reads

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Tech Tips Counting occurrences example
• We will use the sample file “satisf.sav”
• Located in C:Program
FilesIBMSPSSStatistics*VersionSamples
English
*Version: Your SPSS Statistics Version, e.g. 20, 21, 22,…
• The last 6 variables price, numitems, org,
service, quality & overall all have the same
scale
• 1 = Strongly Negative
• 2=Somewhat Negative
• 3= Neutral
• 4=Somewhat Positive
• 5=Strongly Positive

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• Let’s count the number of occurrences
of “Strongly Positive” across the 5
variables
• To create this count variable: Transform
-> Count Values within cases
Tech Tips Counting occurrences: Strongly
Positive

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Tech Tips Counting occurrences example
• In Target Variable type
“Count_Strongly_Positive”
• In the Target Label type “Count of
Strongly Positive Responses
• Select the six variables from the
variable list on the left hand side and
place them in the
Numeric_Variables: list

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• As we want to count the number of
“Strongly Positive” responses for each
respondent and this label corresponds to 5,
we will specify 5 in the value and click Add
• Other options include specifying a range of
values or specifying missing values as the
values to count
• Select Continue and select OK in the main
dialog
Tech Tips Counting occurrences: Define
Values

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Tech Tips New variable:
Count_Strongly_Positive

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• The If cases dialog box allows you to count occurrences of values
for a subset of cases using conditional expressions
– If the result of a conditional expression is true, the case is included
in the selected subset
– If the result of a conditional expression is false or missing, the case is
not included in the selected subset
Tech Tips Count Cases – other options

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