Calculate MEAN and SUM for variables with missing data in SPSS

In this SPSS tutorial I show you how to use SPSS syntax in order to calculate the mean and sum for variables with missing data.
Using the "SUM" or "MEAN" function, you can state how many items participants need to answer ".3" or ".4" in order to calculate a sum or mean for that participant. This way, you can bypass missing data and still calculate a sum or mean for each participant.

[@amaleemccoy8991]

This was exactly the command I was looking for...thanks for the tutorial!!

[@pamelaelias5105]

Perfect! thanks

[@patrickkielly]

This solved my problem! What is the easiest way to open the SPSS Script Editor?

[@loaizabin3273]

Is there any other way from the drop-down menu?
I figured out another way by recording the missing value to be 0 and then running the compute command.

[@johnburke2047]

Hi, thanks for the helpful explanation.
I want to calculate a total score of a questionnaire with a couple of missing items, but want the missing data points to be included as the mean of the specific case/person's scores on that questionnaire only, rather than the dataset mean for that questionnaire. Is there a way to code this... for example
SUM.3(Item_1, Item_2, Item_3, Item_4, Item_5) IF SYSMIS, use MEAN)
Thanks for your help!