Manipulating data sets is a big part of mastering SAS, and often the data you want to work with is not clean, containing errors or missing data. This course covers handling data errors, and validating and cleaning data. It goes on to cover further manipulation of data sets, including merging and combining sets. This course is one of a series that prepares you for the SAS certification exam, SAS Certified Base Programmer for SAS 9.
Learning Objectives
Data Errors
- start the course
- describe how SAS handles errors in raw data files
- describe procedures and techniques for validating and cleaning data in SAS
- use the SAS log to examine data errors
- use conditionals to handle data errors in SAS
Data Validation and Cleaning
- use the PRINT procedure with the WHERE statement to validate data in SAS
- use the FREQ procedure with the TABLES statement to validate data in SAS
- use the MEANS procedure with the VAR statement to validate data in SAS
- use the UNIVARIATE procedure with the VAR statement to validate data in SAS
- open the source data to clean data for SAS
- use assignment statements in the DATA step to clean data in SAS
- use IF-THEN and ELSE statements in the DATA step to clean data in SAS
Data Manipulation
- use the assignment statement in the DATA step to create variables in SAS
- use operators, including SAS functions, to create data values
- use the IF-THEN statement and the IF-THEN DO statement to execute statements conditionally in SAS
- use the ELSE statement to execute alternative actions in an IF-THEN statement in SAS
- use the subsetting IF statement and the WHERE statement to subset observations in SAS
- use the IF-THEN DELETE statement to subset observations in SAS
Combining Data Sets
- describe the methods for combining data sets in SAS
- use the APPEND procedure to append a SAS data set to another SAS data set
- use the FORCE option with the APPEND procedure to append one SAS data set to another SAS data set
- use the SET statement in a DATA step to concatenate two or more SAS data sets
- use the RENAME= data set option to change the names of variables in SAS
- merge SAS data sets one-to-one based on a common variable using MERGE and BY statements in a DATA step
- merge SAS data sets one-to-many based on a common variable using MERGE and BY statements in a DATA step
- use the IN= option to control the observations in the output SAS data set
Practice: Validate, Clean, and Combine Data
- validate and clean data sets and combine them with an append operation and a concatenation
Framework Connections
Specialty Areas
- Data Administration
- Systems Administration
Feedback
If you would like to provide feedback for this course, please e-mail the NICCS SO at NICCS@hq.dhs.gov.