It is not uncommon to have questions like the following:
- “On a scale from 1 = Totally disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither nor..”
- “How often do you….”Every day, 3-5 times a week, once a week, 2-3 times a month…”
- "How many...0, 1, 2, 3...9"
From these you may want to determine what the average value of the response is.
To do this you will create numeric values based on the categories in the questions.
STEPS
1. In the rows and columns, select the question(s) you want to edit.
2. Click “Edit“
3. Depending on the type of variable you may need to use either "Response rows" (e.g. single punch) or the "Response columns" option (e.g. grid questions)
4. To the right of the text labels of the "Response Columns" you may enter the "Scaling factor". You can set the scaling factor manually or click on the Actions button to have it set automatically.
For a question like “On a scale from 1 = Totally disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither nor.." type, you might want to set the weight values to code values.
For a typical question like "How often do you….”Every day, 3-5 times a week, once a week, 2-3 times a month…" type, you will probably want to enter your own values.
You can exclude options such as "Never", "None of the above", or "Other" by setting their scaling factor to zero.
Below the Scaling factor has been set automatically:
In this next example, the Scaling factor values have been manually:
5. When your values are correct click "Update".
The result will be a table where the average (or other numeric values that have been derived from the categories) will be shown below the categories
