How do I change yes/no to numeric values?

[Lisa Frick]

I have a database of yes/no answers that I need to convert into numeric
values. Does anyone know how to do this?
If this question doesn't make sense this is an example of the data:

Are you under 65? Y/N
Are you overweight? Y/N
Are you diabetic? Y/N
Are you sedentary? Y/N
Are you pregnant? Y/N

I need to assign some of the yes answers more "points" than others and then
I can total the points for each patient.

Thanks!
Lisa

 

[JulieD]

Hi Lisa

this is a newsgroup for the product Microsoft Project, which i'm guessing
you're not using to store this data in. I would suggest asking in either
microsoft.public.access.gettingstarted if you are using Microsoft Access for
your database or
microsoft.public.excel.newusers if you're using Excel for this.

Without knowing the program you're using it is a bit difficult to provide a
useful solution.

You might also like to add to your example an idea of how you are going to
assign the points (1st Question yes gets 5 points, no gets 3; etc).

Cheers
JulieD

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Echoing Julie re the appropriate group. But as an FYI, Access, VB, and SQL
use 0 for False and consider any non-zero value to mean True. If one
converts a boolean (Y/N) field to an integer data type or changes its
display attribute in the field properties, you'll find that it's stored as
signed integers where "Yes" values are -1. As to the weighting values, the
simplest seems to be to add a field for a weighting multiplier as part of
the master question parameter definitions (you do have the datasbase
normalized to the point that there is a separate table containing the
question pool and their parameters do yout not?) A query then that
muliplies the value in the boolean field by the weighting and totals the
result is easy-peasy.