Value Attributes is a set of metadata relating to individual variables.
Technical details
Fields
The Value Attributes are modified by either changing Variable Set Structure, or by clicking on a Variable or Variable Set in the Data Sources tree and selecting one of the following buttons in the Data > Attributes section of the Properties , depending on the structure:
Values & Labels - Appears for Nominal, Ordinal, Nominal - Multi, Ordinal - Multi, Binary - Multi (Compact), and Experiment variable sets.
Values - Appears for Numeric, Numeric - Multi, Numeric - Grid, and Ranking variable sets.
Categories - Appears for Binary - Multi and Binary - Grid variable sets.
By clicking one of the above buttons, you can modify the following in the Value Attributes window:
- Labels - This is used to change the name displayed for each category.
- Select Categories - This is used when defining which categories are combined in a Binary - Multi or Binary - Grid Variable Set.
- Values - This is used to change the values of a variable used when numeric summaries, such as means and standard deviations, are computed.
- Missing Values - Deals with how specific categories in the data are included or excluded from calculations.
If Missing Values is set to Exclude from analyses or Hide but include in NET calculations for any value, the Hidden Column Categories/Hidden Row Categories/Hidden Categories button will appear, depending on the variable set's structure. If you click one of those buttons, you will have the ability to quickly reset the Missing Values settings for selected values to Include in percentages (but not averages).
The Reset button will reset data to the form it had when it was initially imported or created.
Inconsistent Value Attributes
When the value attributes of multiple Variables do not agree with one another (e.g., in a Variable Set), they are inconsistent. Inconsistent Value Attributes are displayed with a red background in the Value Attributes Dialog, or as a checkbox that is neither checked nor unchecked. When the source labels of a value are inconsistent, hovering the mouse over the label field shows a message stating "Source labels vary across variables" instead of the source label.
Method
See Variable Sets in our Displayr Help Center for worked examples of how to set Value Attributes for a variable set.
Editing value attributes with another program
It is also possible to edit value attributes using a spreadsheet editor such as Microsoft Excel. This is particularly helpful if you have a lot of things to change.
- In the Data > Attributes section of the Properties
select Values & Labels, Values, or Categories, depending on the variable set's structure.
- Press Export and copy the value attributes into a spreadsheet.
- After editing the value attributes, press Import and paste the value attributes table from a spreadsheet into the text box. Note that the value attributes should be in a tab-separated-values format (this will typically be done automatically by the spreadsheet editor).
- Press OK twice to apply the changes.