SPSS® 12.0 Command Syntax Reference

MISSING Subcommand
CORRELATIONS 275
MISSING controls the treatment of missing values.
• The PAIRWISE and LISTWISE keywords are alternatives; however, each can be specified
with INCLUDE or EXCLUDE.
• The default is LISTWISE and EXCLUDE.
PAIRWISE Exclude missing values pairwise. Cases that have missing values for one or
both of a pair of variables for a specific correlation coefficient are excluded
from the computation of that coefficient. Since each coefficient is based on all
cases that have valid values for that particular pair of variables, this can result
in a set of coefficients based on a varying number of cases. The valid number
of cases is displayed in the Correlations table. This is the default.
LISTWISE Exclude missing values listwise. Cases that have missing values for any
variable named on any VARIABLES list are excluded from the computation of
all coefficients across lists. The valid number of cases is the same for all
analyses and is displayed in a single annotation.
INCLUDE Include user-missing values. User-missing values are included in the analysis.
EXCLUDE Exclude all missing values. Both user- and system-missing values are excluded
from the analysis.
MATRIX Subcommand
MATRIX writes matrix materials to a data file. The matrix materials include the mean and standard
deviation for each variable, the number of cases used to compute each coefficient, and
the Pearson correlation coefficients. Several procedures can read matrix materials produced
by CORRELATIONS, including PARTIAL CORR, REGRESSION, FACTOR, and CLUSTER (see
“SPSS Matrix Data Files” on p. 15).
• CORRELATIONS cannot write rectangular matrices (those specified with the keyword
WITH) to a file.
• If you specify more than one variable list on CORRELATIONS, only the last list that does
not use the keyword WITH is written to the matrix data file.
• The keyword OUT specifies the file to which the matrix is written. The filename must be
specified in parentheses.
• Documents from the original file will not be included in the matrix file and will not be
present if the matrix file becomes the working data file.
OUT (filename) Write a matrix data file. Specify either a file or an asterisk (*), enclosed in
parentheses. If you specify a file, the file is stored on disk and can be
retrieved at any time. If you specify an asterisk, the matrix data file replaces
the working file but is not stored on disk unless you use SAVE or XSAVE.