[DDI-SRG] Missing value range and interval measurement

[Pascal Heus]

Achim:
This is an issue I raised by email couple of weeks ago. It is currently 
not supported. What I do in DExT is to assume all the values are 
discrete and I generate a missing for every number in the range. I agree 
that this may cause some serious overhead and I may put a limit in the 
next version of the SPSSReader (like default of 200 values that can be 
change by application if needed).
The continuous variable case was also pointed out by Guido Gay a(working 
on the R SPSS-DDI converter) and I don't think there is much we can do 
about it for now. We should file this as a bug for 3.1. This however 
seem to be an SPSS speicif issue, I don;t think Stata or SAS support 
missing value ranges (?). What about other packages?
best
*P

Joachim Wackerow wrote:
> Currently I'm working again on the SPSS converter.
>
> I'm wondering how to express in DDI a missing value range of a variable 
> with an interval measurement level.
>
> For example the variable temperature. A missing value range is 20-25 
> Celsius. The values are expressed as floating numbers like 20.17 etc., 
> which are not all known in advance. This can be expressed in SPSS. In 
> DDI I don't see a way. Do I miss something?
>
> For variables with ordinal measurement (i.e. with categories like 
> occupation) a workaround can be used for expressing a missing value 
> range in DDI. Each category in the missing value range must be defined 
> as missing. This can produce some overhead. Category entries with just 
> the missing definition can be produced without labels depending on the 
> definition in files of the statistical packages.
>
> Any ideas? I think we discussed already a similar issue?
>
> Achim
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