IBM Support

Searching string variable for presence of substring

Troubleshooting


Problem

How can I direct SPSS to search for a word in a long string variable? For example, I have 5000 records of students who saw an academic counselor. One of the variables is a long string (40 characters) that gives the reason(s) for the visit. I need to search the entire variable for a few keywords, then select them out for analysis. For example, I would search the variable for the keyword "transfer", for students who are intending to transfer to a four-year college, and then analyze the demographics. Next, I would search for "degree", for students who intend to get an AA or AS degree, etc. The problem is that the text is not in any formal order. One entry might be "Student needs help for transfer to USC for Journalism.". The next one might be "Transfer to UCLA, and needs help with study habits." I need a search command that would find both cases.

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Historical Number

17467

Document Information

More support for:
IBM SPSS Statistics

Software version:
Not Applicable

Document number:
417763

Modified date:
16 April 2020

UID

swg21476166

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