Creating a Summarized Data Set Using PROC MEANS

You might want to create an output SAS data set that contains just the summarized variable. You can do this by using the OUTPUT statement in PROC MEANS.


General form, OUTPUT statement:
OUTPUT OUT=SAS-data-set statistic=variable(s);
where
  • OUT= specifies the name of the output data set
  • statistic= specifies the summary statistic written out
  • variable(s) specifies the names of the variables to create. These variables represent the statistics for the analysis variables that are listed in the VAR statement.

 

When you use the OUTPUT statement, the summary statistics N, MEAN, STD, MIN, and MAX are produced for all of the numeric variables or for all of the variables that are listed in a VAR statement by default. To specify which statistics to produce, use the STATISTIC= option.


Specifying the STATISTIC= option

You can specify which statistics to produce in the output data set. To do so, you must specify the statistic and then list all of the variables. The variables must be listed in the same order as in the VAR statement. You can specify more than one statistic in the OUTPUT statement.

The following program creates a typical PROC MEANS report and also creates a summarized output data set. 

     proc means data=clinic.diabetes;
        var age height weight;
        class sex;
        output out=work.sum_gender
           mean=AvgAge AvgHeight AvgWeight
           min=MinAge MinHeight MinWeight;
     run;

Sex N Obs Variable N Mean Std Dev Minimum Maximum
F 11 Age
Height
Weight		 11
11
11		 48.9090909
63.9090909
150.4545455		 13.3075508
2.1191765
18.4464828		 16.0000000
61.0000000
102.0000000		 63.0000000
68.0000000
168.0000000
M 9 Age
Height
Weight		 9
9
9		 44.0000000
70.6666667
204.2222222		 12.3895117
2.6457513
30.2893454		 15.0000000
66.0000000
140.0000000		 54.0000000
75.0000000
240.0000000


To see the contents of the output data set, submit the following PROC PRINT step.

     proc print data=work.sum_gender;
     run;

Obs Sex _TYPE_ _FREQ_ AvgAge AvgHeight AvgWeight MinAge MinHeight MinWeight
1   0 20 46.7000 66.9500 174.650 15 61 102
2 F 1 11 48.9091 63.9091 150.455 16 61 102
3 M 1 9 44.0000 70.6667 204.222 15 66 140


Hot tip:

You can use the NOPRINT option in the PROC MEANS statement to prevent the default report from being created. For example, the following program creates only the output data set:

proc means data=clinic.diabetes noprint;
   var age height weight;
   class sex;
   output out=work.sum_gender
      mean=AvgAge AvgHeight AvgWeight;
run;
Hot tip:

In addition to the variables that you specify, the procedure adds the _TYPE_ and _FREQ_ variables to the output data set. When no statistic keywords are specified, PROC MEANS also adds the variable _STAT_. For more information about these variables, see the SAS documentation for the MEANS procedure.