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15.7.1.3 Overriding Measurement Level

By default, CTABLES uses a variable’s measurement level to decide whether to treat it as categorical or scalar. Variables assigned the nominal or ordinal measurement level are treated as categorical, and scalar variables are treated as scalar.

When PSPP reads data from a file in an external format, such as a text file, variables’ measurement levels are often unknown. If CTABLES runs when a variable has an unknown measurement level, it makes an initial pass through the data to guess measurement levels using the rules described in an earlier section (see Measurement Level). Use the VARIABLE LEVEL command to set or change a variable’s measurement level (see VARIABLE LEVEL).

To treat a variable as categorical or scalar only for one use on CTABLES, add ‘[C]’ or ‘[S]’, respectively, after the variable name. The following example shows the output when variable monthDaysMin1drink is analyzed as scalar (the default for its measurement level) and as categorical: 

CTABLES
    /TABLE monthDaysMin1drink BY gender
    /TABLE monthDaysMin1drink [C] BY gender.
Custom Tables
S3a. GENDER:
Male Female
Mean Mean
20. On how many of the thirty days in this typical month did you have one or more alcoholic beverages to drink? 7 5
Custom Tables
S3a. GENDER:
Male Female
Count Count
20. On how many of the thirty days in this typical month did you have one or more alcoholic beverages to drink? None 152 258
1 403 653
2 284 324
3 169 215
4 178 143
5 107 106
6 67 59
7 31 11
8 101 74
9 6 4
10 95 75
11 4 0
12 58 33
13 3 2
14 13 3
15 79 58
16 10 6
17 4 2
18 5 4
19 2 0
20 105 47
21 2 0
22 3 3
23 0 3
24 3 0
25 35 25
26 1 1
27 3 3
28 13 8
29 3 3
Every day 104 43

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