Would like to be able to sort the values in recode using count and then group similar responses. Currently "grouping" is turned off automatically when any sort is applied in recode.
You are right. Change to... will work, but I think it can be a little confusing - particularly if the list of options to recode is long. Below is a message I sent back to Mia Stephens who was asking a question in a similar space. We were looking for an options to not automatically sort items in recode based on the new value. The suggestion was to sort on the old value which I never thought of, but would work just fine for a 1 to 1 recode.
One situation that works, but might be more confusing is if a user wants to recode a column and group some of the question response options together. A fairly common survey question is asking respondents what brands of a category they have used in a recent time period and which brand they have used most often.
An example is below (attached figure 1) where the column on the left is what are all the brands of toilet tissue have you purchased in the past 6 months and the one on the right is which brand have you purchased most often. The question has the same list of responses, but the column on the left is multiple response and the column on the right is nominal. It is interesting because the supplier used different values for the question even though they are in the same questionnaire.
A user may want to use recode to create a new column at just the brand level (Charmin) versus the current sub-brand level (Charmin Ultra Strong, Soft, Basic, etc). We currently tell folks to use group in recode.
The option to group response levels is turned off in recode if the levels are sorted. In a separate wish list post (tracking number 7612983581), Jeff Perkinson and Ernest Pasour correctly point out that if I sort on old value or count, I can choose the option of changing to a new value instead of grouping. This works on both types of columns. In the multiple response option you would need to select “Remove duplicate items” and that will make sure the new column only have a code for Charmin in there once. It looks to do that automatically with the nominal question.
It may be a little confusing to someone with the nominal column because it looks like there will be multiple 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s in the new column. It might also be confusing for users who think they would have to change the new label for every row (figure 2). That doesn’t seem to be the case. Recode seems to take the label from the first occurrence and use that in the new column.
The user could also click on view groups when they are done with changing all the values. That would make it more clear. Net - the solution you suggest would work, it just isn't terribly user friendly.
I think we're not understanding exactly what you want here. As @ErnestPasour points out, you can still group similar values, by selecting them and right clicking to choose "Change to..."
Can you clarify exactly what's missing here or what behavior you would like?
Are you hoping to have the grouping still displayed after sorting? If so, that's really not possible unless it's sorted by the New Values where the rows to be grouped together will be adjacent and can be shown grouped.
However, maybe you're wanting to sort by a new type of count column, one that doesn't currently exist: the count of number of rows included in a new group, essentially the sum of the counts within a group. If so, let's change this request to add that column to the recode window and allow sorting by that and keeping the grouped display.
If you select multiple items (rows) in the table, you should be able to right click and group the items to one of the values (or a new value). This will have the side effect of re-entering grouping mode (and losing the sort). I probably will change the context menu in 16.0 to be something like "Make same value" (if not in grouping mode) so that you don't keep losing your sort.
