When data for a respondent is to be read from more than one file, a file called merges must exist in the current directory, defining the files to be merged and the type of merge required.

The merge type is identified by a key, as follows:

This is the first item in the merges file, and is followed by the names of the files to be merged with the main data file. These can be entered on separate lines or on the same line as the merge type, in which case items must be separated by semicolons. For example:

For more information about merging data files, see Merging data files.