CompuStat Data Items

In research articles you sometimes find that researchers used CompuStat Data Item 4 or CompuStat Item 162, etc. This means they’ve used a previous version of CompuStat. You can find them labeled as legacy data. In the current version of CompuStat these numbers are no longer used, now you see Current Assets – Total or Cash in the request form. Mind you the data items in North America aren’t  the same as in Compustat Global. E.g. in Compustat NA item 1 is Selling, General and Admin Expenses and in Global item1 stand for Sales

There is a ‘translation-file’ available:  click the link Manuals and Overview in CompuStat and go to ‘Variable Translations – Compann Compqtr and PDE’. There you can open the translation file for CompuStat Annual and CompuStat Quarterly.