topic Reverse Coding in SAS Programming

Reverse Coding

yoyong — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 19:47:27 GMT

Hi everyone.

I have twenty questions: Q1 - Q20. The responses are in the form of Likert scale.

1 – “strongly agree”

2 – “somewhat agree”

3 – “neither agree no disagree’

4 – “somewhat disagree’

5 – “ strongly disagree”

How do I do reverse coding for all questions at one time?

Thanks for your help.

Re: Reverse Coding

HB — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 20:11:47 GMT

This site:

https://www.theanalysisfactor.com/easy-reverse-code/

is suggesting a neat subtraction trick:

Data yourdata;
Set yourdata;
NewVariable = 6 – OldVariable;
Run;

q1recode = 6 - q1;

If q1 is a 5, q1recode becomes a 1.

If q1 is a 1, q1recode becomes a 5.

Re: Reverse Coding

Reeza — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 20:23:16 GMT

Use arrays and math.

data want;
set have;

array _Q(20) Q1-Q20;

do i=1 to dim(_Q);
_q(i) = 6 - _q(i);
end;

run;

Re: Reverse Coding

SuryaKiran — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 20:25:03 GMT

Not sure what your trying to do. As far as I understood here is my tip:

If your scale is in continuous sequence then

data test;
input num;
datalines;
1
2
3
4
5
;
run;

proc sql;
select *,(max(num)+1)-num as new_num
from test;
quit;

If not continuous then,

data test;
input num;
datalines;
1
2
4
5
;
run;
proc sort data=test out=reverse_test;
by descending num;
run;
data reverse;
merge test reverse_test(rename=(num=new_num));
run;