Key Concepts About Recoding Variables in NHANES
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.,
race/ethnicity),
- recoding a continuous variable (e.g., age)
into a categorical variable (e.g. age group),
- calculating the mean value of several
variables combined to create a new variable (e.g., mean systolic
and diastolic blood pressure based on our different measures),
- combining several variables to create a
new variable (e.g., hypertension condition), and
- defining a disease or condition based on
certain cut-off values (e.g., high cholesterol).
