Key Concepts About Recoding Variables in NHANES I

Recoding is an important step for preparing an analytical dataset. You may want to recode variables to create new variables that fit your analytic needs. Recoding variables is useful in multiple scenarios, such as:

• recoding a categorical variable (e.g., education, heart attack, stroke),
• recoding a continuous variable (e.g., age) into a categorical variable (e.g. age group),
• combining several variables to create a new variable (e.g., hypertension condition, body mass index),  and
• defining a disease or condition based on certain cut-off values (e.g., high cholesterol).