Ranking observations based*on other variables.

Dear all,

I have data on rating performed by students. For instance, each student had to rate the height of five bars.

I would like to re-code my bar heights variable such that the bars that received the highest rating out of all the bars would get a value of 1. So basically my coding would include values between (1 to 5) where 1 indicates the tallest bar and 5 the shortest. Some students have given bars the same rating (as they considered them to be of the same height).

So is there an efficient way of doing this?

Thanks in advance,

Maya