The primary procedure for obtaining ranks is the RANK procedure in Base SAS software. Note that the PRINQUAL and TRANSREG procedures also provide rank transformations. With all three of these procedures, you can create an output data set and use it as input to another SAS/STAT procedure or to the IML procedure. For more information, see the chapter “The RANK Procedure” in the Base SAS Procedures Guide. Also see Chapter 78: The PRINQUAL Procedure, and Chapter 101: The TRANSREG Procedure.

In addition, you can specify SCORES=RANK in the TABLES statement in the FREQ procedure. PROC FREQ then uses ranks to perform the analyses requested and generates nonparametric analyses.

For more discussion of the rank transform, see Iman and Conover (1979); Conover and Iman (1981); Hora and Conover (1984); Iman, Hora, and Conover (1984); Hora and Iman (1988); Iman (1988).