I have been setting up a multiple response quesitonnaire that asks participants if they have ever had medical complications for their eating disorder. So in the text label in medialab I have put "orthostatic", bradycardic, etc.

When I go to analyze this in spss it records the data as var001 var002 etc. which I believe is due to the length of the variable name. So my first question is (1) Is there a way to have the text label presented to subjects such that I can keep the length of the text in medialab (e.g., bradycardic) but have it shortened when it is dumped into the spss file so that it doesnt' just read var001, var 002 etc but rather something like "bradycar".

My second question is related to the drop down box option in spss. I have not been able to get media lab to interface with the drop down box option in spss using the labels option on variable view. (2) So question #2 is is there a way to use media lab such that it automatically creates data that is read in the drop down box option (e.g., 1 = orthostatic, 2 = bradycardic, etc.) rather than var001 = 1, var002 = 0, var001 = 1 etc.

Thanks