On 06/03/2010 11:11 PM, Simon Kiss wrote:
Help with survey data:
Hello R colleagues,
I hope this is an appropriate place to direct this question. It relates
specifically to the comparability of a 5-point likert to a 4-point
likert scale.
One question in my dataset asks "How much should be done to reduce the
gap between rich and poor"
Much more, somewhat more, about the same, somewhat less and much less.
The second questions ask:
"People who can afford to, should be able to pay for their own health care"
strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly agree.
Now, assuming that I rescale them so that 1 equals the most egalitarian
position and the highest number (4 or 5) equals the least egalitarian
position, how can I make these two results comparable.
Two ways come to mind: one is to collapse both into a dichotomous
variable and do a logistic regression on both. The danger here is that I
have to decide what to do with the middle position in the first
question, assign it to the egalitarian or non-egalitarian category.
A second way would be to multiply the scores in the first question by 4
(to get results that are either 4, 8, 12, 16 or 20) and then multiply
the second question by five to get responses that are either 5, 10, 15
or 20. My idea is then to add the two, average them and use that value
as an index of economic egalitarianism?
Yes / no? Suggestions?
I am an R user and I hope that a purely statistical question is not
especially misplaced.
Hi Simon,
Strictly speaking, only the second question is a Likert scale, as that
assumes a measure of agreement, not some other quantitative dimension.
Assuming that the fourth option on Q2 is "Strongly disagree", and you
wish to argue that this and the first option on Q1 ("Much more") both
represent the maximally egalitarian responses, you could reverse Q2
and scale it to the same range (i.e. 1,2,3,4,to 5,3.67,2.33,1) so that
it would have the same weight in an additive composite score. If I was
reviewing a paper that suggested this, I would expect a pretty sound
defense of the notion that income redistribution and public health care
were strongly linked attitudes.
Jim
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