IF THEN ELSE caluclated column

[Thant]

Greetings,
Here is my problem. I have a large custom list and most all of the responses are set as pull downs. The three responses are as follows:
1 Negative/Adverse Impact
2 Neutral Impact
3 Positive Benificial Impact
I need to convert these items into something that can be averaged. I realize that I could just put them in as straight numbers and that would do it but im afraid this would cause confusion for my users. My question is this could I use something like and IF THEN ELSE here? I am NOT a programmer and am way outside of my depth but I would picture it to be something like this

If {field name} = 1 Negative/Adverse Impact THEN 1 ELSE 
IF 2 Neutral Impact THEN 2 ELSE 
3 Positive Impact THEN 3

What I would need to do then is take all of those numerical values and create an Average calculation on them.

I hope this makes sense and I look forward to your response
Thanks

Anything worth doing is worth messing up at least 5 times before you get it right!

 

[SkipVought]

Is this in an Excel workbook?

Given your example, assuming that it is Excel and your data is in column A, beginning in row 2
[tt]
A2: 1 Negative/Adverse Impact

B2: =Value(Left(A2,1))
[/tt]
the formula in B2 would return 1.

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![/sub]

 

[Thant]

It is in a sharepoint calculated column which to my understanding has the same calculation capabilities as excel, but not the same cell layout
Thanks


Anything worth doing is worth messing up at least 5 times before you get it right!