Numeric questions may be enhanced with special values. For example, a numeric wage question may contain in addition to a numeric input, a selection of “minimum wage” and “last month’s wage” categories. They can be set up in the Designer by entering integer numeric codes and corresponding value labels:

On a tablet, either a value should be entered, or one of the provided options may be selected (but not both):

If the user enters a numeric value that happens to be a special value code, the corresponding special value option will be selected automatically on entry.

Special values are stored as codes and are exported in the same numeric variable, with labels defined in file formats that support value labels.

Note: the special values feature may be used to accommodate the common situations with capturing “Refusal”, “Don’t know”, and similar. However, when such a special value is selected the question will be counted as answered, and the answer to the question will be treated as non-missing during the expressions evaluation.