I am primarily studying extent of ICT tools usage, and if it varies across organisations in the study area (based on organisation profile variable).

I am also studying its impact on an outcome ( business performance). My scale for ICT usage is 5 point scale namely,  Never, rarely Sometimes, very often and always, while that of performance and other variables is "S. Disagree to S. Agree scale.

I have the following questions-

a) Since the scale measures extent of usage and Never (1) signifies no usage, should I code them as 0 in  spss or as 1? What should be interpreting criteria in that case? Can I apply EFA on this then.

b) When studying the relationship between extent of usage and performance, do i need to convert the scores as they are measured on different scales or can i proceed simply by taking the mean of them each.  Both extent of usage and performance are multidimensional.  Thanking you in anticipation.

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