Standardizing Levels or Labels Across Factors

Sometimes you may want to use the same labels and levels in more than one factor. Standardizing levels lets you combine the levels or labels of two or more factors to ensure consistency across all of them. The factors to be standardized can be in the same spreadsheet or in different sheets. Levels or labels for these factors are redefined to have the same items in the same order, and the labels can be modified to all use the same case.

Note: To walk through a worked example please click here.

Open each spreadsheet you want to standardize levels across then select Spread | Factor | Standardize Levels.
Use the arrow buttons to move factors from Available data to Selected factors.
Set other options as required or leave all settings at their defaults and click OK.

Sort factors in list by	This controls the order the factors appear in the Available data list. Names – Factors are sorted alphabetically by name, ignoring case where factors from separate sheets with the same name are placed together. This allows you to easily select factors with the same name from different sheets. (see image above) Sheets – The factors are displayed sheet by sheet in the order that they appear within each sheet.
Standardize using	Specifies whether the factors are standardized using the Labels or Levels. If a factor has only ordinals, the ordinal values 1…n will be used as the levels. If labels are selected, then the case for the characters may be changed with the Case of labels option. When factors are standardized using levels any labels associated with the factors will be lost, and vice versa
Sort direction for levels/labels	This controls how the combined set of levels or labels for the redefined factors are sorted. Ascending – Sort the items into ascending order A…Z, 0…9. Descending – Sort the items into descending order Z…A, 9…0. None – given order in factors – Levels or labels are not sorted but are kept in the order in which they are met in the Selected factors to be standardized list. Note: If Case of labels is set to Given then upper and lower case characters will be sorted separately, so A…Z will come before a…z.
Case of labels	Allows you to change the case of letters in the labels. The setting, Given, leaves the labels unchanged. So, for example, ‘Control’ and ‘control’ would be treated as two different labels. The other settings amalgamate labels which are the same when ignoring case. Given – Leaves the case of each letter exactly as given in the string. Lower – Changes all letters to lower case a…z. Upper – Changes all letters to upper case A…Z (capital letters). Title – Begins each new word with a capital letter, but otherwise uses lowercase. The characters _$%- are regarded as part of the word. The following characters separate words ‘ ,.:;?!+=&@#^&b/\|~”‘. Sentence* – Puts the first character in the text (if a letter) into upper case, then uses uppercase only at the start of each new sentence, i.e. only after the period, question mark or exclamation mark characters (.?!).

Updated on June 20, 2019

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