Administrative functions > Data conversion programs > Converting Quantum data and programs with qtspss > How qtspss works > Data description file
 
Data description file
The data description file consists of four types of statement:
TITLE statement
This defines the run title which is read from tt statements following the a statement. If there is no run title in the Quantum program, this statement is omitted.
DATA LIST statement
This names the data file, defines the data format and names the variables (axes) present in the data. Variables in this list appear in the order the corresponding axes are named on the tab statements in the Quantum run. Axes which are used by more than one tab statement are ignored after the first time. The Quantum statements:
tab age sex
tab occup age
become:
DATA LIST FILE="data.qsp" FREE/
age sex occup .
The order of variables in this list defines the order of values in the data file (see below).
VARIABLE LABELS statements
One of these statements is created for each variable.
VALUE LABELS statements
These statements generally follow the VARIABLE LABELS statement. They introduce the values which are found in the data file for the variables. Each value has a text description and corresponds to some extent to an element in an axis. For example, the Quantum axis:
l sex
col 15;Base;Male;Female
becomes:
VARIABLE LABELS sex
VALUE LABELS sex 1 "Male" 2 "Female"
For more information on values, see Variables and values.
End of file
The file ends with a comment reporting the number of cases in the data file.
See also
How qtspss works