Data description file
The data description file consists of three sections:
proc format section
This section is related to single-coded and numeric axes in your Quantum program. Each Quantum axis becomes an SAS variable and this section defines, for each variable (axis), the values which may be found in the data and the responses which those values represent. For example:
l sex
col 110;Base;Male;Female
becomes
proc format;
value sexfmt
1 = 'Male'
2 = 'Female'
;
run;
Each format name is generated by taking the first five characters of the axis name (or the full name if shorter) and appending the string ‘fmt’.
The section ends with a run statement which tells SAS to process the statements in this section.
For more information about variables and values, see
Variables and values.
data section
Statements in this section name the data file and list the names of the axes (variables) present in that file in the order they occur. Axes which appear on more than one tab statement are ignored after the first time. Thus, the Quantum statements:
tab age sex
tab occup sex
become:
data;
infile "statdata";
input
age
sex
occup
;
format section
This section associates a format from the proc format section with each single-coded or numeric variable in the data list. It also defines a descriptive text for the SAS labels generated for other types of axes and variables in the Quantum run. These include complex axes formed from more than one question and variables whose values are generated during the run rather than being read directly from the data file.
Since the sex axis is single-coded, its format has been defined in the proc format section, so the entry in this section just names the format to be used:
format sex sexfmt.;
The definition of an element in a multicoded axis has the form:
label _color1 = "Red";
where Red is the first element in the axis called color.
The section ends with a run statement telling SAS to process these statements.
Sometimes, qtsas omits elements or axes from the SAS specification. With elements this is because there are no respondents in those elements; with axes it is because they contain no ‘basic’ elements, such as n01 or col statements.
See also