Rounded numeric values in SPSS .SAV file?

[jarvis24]

[edited from support email]

I have made a questionnaire and in text labels have put {} brackets to denote that I want a different response written to data files. I am trying to get this response to be a scale with 0.5 increments (-1.5, -1.0, -0.5 etc). It appears to write correctly to both the excel and txt files, but in SPSS it is rounding up to nearest whole number. That is, it will write -1.5 in both the excel and txt files - but write -2.0 in SPSS.

Any ideas why this is happening? I have tried changing the syntax file although I'm making no inroads there. Thanks

[jarvis24]

[edited follow-ups from support emails]

I think SPSS is expecting integer values and won't take decimal values for a scale response. So I'm guessing it's rounding. Is that consistent with what you are finding?

thanks for getting back to me. Yes it does appear to be rounding. I'm not sure how to change the SPSS to expect a decimal value though. In variable view SPSS is set up to accept numeric - so I thought that would be ok. I tried to change things in the syntax file, without any success, so I'm not sure what to try next.

Are the numbers ok in the csv file?

Yes the numbers were correct in the csv file. It was only the SPSS that was incorrect. I fixed it by changing them to write text. Then when I'm in SPSS I can change it back. Thanks.