Hi, I am trying to assess a personality trait by creating a score for it. The score is obtained from 2 statements on the opposing poles of the trait.
The statements are 6-point Likert type questions (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree, Not Sure) and are scored from 1(Strongly disagree) - 5 (Strongly agree) and Not sure is treated as a missing value.
When combining the score for the 2 statements to obtain a final score for the personality trait, the final score for a respondent is coming as missing even if one of the statements has a response of Not sure. For example if a respondent replies Agree (score of 4) for one statement and the response for the other statement Is Not sure (therefore missing), then instead of a final score of 4, the score comes as missing data.
Is there anyway to compute the score keeping Not sure as missing?
Hello Astha,
If selection of "Not sure" is best considered akin to a missing value (just like refusal to respond, though survey specialists would tell you these are quite different animals!), then any case that chooses "Not sure" should rightly not have a score for the sum of the responses to the two items/statements.
It's up to you to decide whether a single response is adequate to yield a "personality trait score." If so, then modify your scoring algorithm to accept instances of a single response as well as both responses. You didn't indicate what software you're using; the requisite syntax will depend on the package.
Good luck with your work.
@David Morse Hello David, Thank you for your reply. I agree with your idea. I am using SPSS to analyse my data. Is there a syntax or an online tutorial you could recommend that describes how to accept single or double responses when computing scores in SPSS?
Hello again Astha:
This simple syntax would work:
compute total = 0 .
execute .
if (var1 > 0) total = total + var1 .
if (var2 > 0) total = total + var2 .
execute .
missing values total (0) .
where: "total" is the new score, "var1" and "var2" are the constituent items, and a "Not sure" response was coded as 0 for both items.
Good luck with your work.
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