Computing variables in SPSS

Sometimes you may need to compute a new variable based on existing information (from other variables) in your data. For example, you may want to:
• Convert the units of a variable from feet to meters
• Use a subject's height and weight to compute their BMI
• Compute a subscale score from items on a survey
• Apply a computation conditionally, so that a new variable is only computed for cases where certain conditions are met
In this tutorial, we'll discuss how to compute variables in SPSS using numeric expressions, built-in functions, and conditional logic.