The second option on the generic extraction screen allows you to select
which columns in the original datafile will be in your output file.
For most studies, you will need to consult the codebook and determine
the column locations of the variables you want and enter those column
numbers in the "Select columns to output" box on the form.
Some studies, however, instead of having an empty box here for you to
type in column numbers and ranges, have a "pick list" of variables
available. For these studies, all you have to do is use your browser
options to select one or more vaviables from the pick list. SSDC will
take care of the rest for you. You can look at
an example of a pick list or
look at a study that has a pick list for a full example.
The following is an example of a study that does not have a pick list.
As you can see above, a column or a sequence of columns contain
the codes for "variables." Thus, in the
sample dataset,
column 10 contains a code of "1" to
indicate a female respondent and a code of "2" to indicate a male
respondent.
Some variable don't require codes; for instance,
columns 3-9 contain the first name of the respondent.
Example:
The form below is filled out to get just
female respondents
(column 10 = 1) and to
print to our output dataset just the record number
(columns 1-2), first name
(columns 3-9), and
sex (column 10) of each of these.
