Dear Pedro:
-1 is a legal integer, but it needs space. You first say the field was "##", then it must accommodate -1. Later you say it was "#", that cannot accommodate it. If the first is true (##) then something else is wrong, if the second is true (#) then the field is too short. If you do not have it, create a qes file from the REC file and look what type of field is there. While converting a numeric file to a text file is easy, it looses too much information (ability to calculate), and going the other way is not trivial I believe, thus try to figure out what is wrong with the actual presumed numeric field DAYS.
Regards,
Hans
epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:
Dear EpiData friends,
I have a qes like this
days NUMBER OF DAYS WITHOUT MEDICINE IN THE PERIOD ##
However the ones who filled the CRFs filled this with -1 if there was no information about this question.
Now Im testin the entrys to start feeding the datasets and just realize that -1 is not a legal integer for field #
I thought that converting this field from # to <A > would work and later in the analysis to encode this variable to integer.
WOuld this work? any more elegant workaround?
Best regards,
Abraço forte e que a força esteja com você, Pedro Emmanuel