I have a dataset with different dates for different persons, sorted in one column. I need to create a new variable that looks at the first data of a person and insert the earliest date into the new column. Do any of you know how I might do this? Thanks in advance.

Data is sorted like this:

DATA LIST LIST / person (F2.0) data (adate) .
BEGIN DATA
1 06/11/50
1 06/11/51
1 06/11/52
1 06/11/53
2 06/11/50
2 07/11/50
2 08/11/50
END DATA.

It may not be the best syntax, but I couldn't get any smaller code...

First, compute a new variable that equals a future date. Then compute another variable usind the DATEDIFF function:


Now, the syntax will restructure the data in order to have a single case for each ID and extract the early date based on the difference computed before.


The DATE variable is the earliest date. Just change the syntax according to the number of cases you have.