To force an axis to be multicoded and not single-coded, type

or

on the l statement.

By default, when exporting axes to SPSS, Quantum treats an axis as single-coded unless it actually holds multicoded data. This means that if you want to use the same specifications on different data sets, one or more might not actually have multicoded data for a given axis, so the output type would be data dependent.

For example, if you have the following axis:

If you asked this question to two separate groups of people, you might find that in the first group no more than one kind of pet was owned per person, but in the following group of people, some owned more than one kind of pet. If you then export the data independently, the data for the first group would be exported as a single-coded question, but the data for the second group would be exported as a multicoded question. Consequently, the output types would be inconsistent and if you wanted to merge them together, you would have to do it manually.

You can force the export output type using the keyword exportmp on an axis. When this keyword is present, Quantum treats the axis as multicoded regardless of how many responses are coded per respondent. This means that both data sets are in the same format and can be easily merged at a later date.