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SocialResearcher
Calcite | Level 5

Hello,

I have a data set with multiple scales (Demographics, Identification, Attitudes), each composed of 6 items each (Demographic: D1-D6; Identification: I1-I6; Attitudes: A1-A6). I am noticing many of the participants entered the same value (all 4s or all 5s) for all the questions within the same scale (all 4s for Demographic and all 5s for Identification). This indicates they weren't paying attention or taking the survey seriously so I don't want to include these participants in my data set. I do have an ID variable in the file. I would like to screen these participants out. Is there a way I can select participants who have entered the same value for all items (D1-D6) within a scale (demographics)? Note that I don't want to screen out any one specific value, it could be all 4s or all 5s, the specific number is not important but the consistency of the same number for every question within the scale is the problem.

If I have multiple scales, would I have to do something different?

2 REPLIES 2
PGStats
Opal | Level 21

Use a condition like RANGE(of D1-D6) > 0 and RANGE(of A1-A6) > 0 ... in a datastep to select participants.

PG

Edited (added "of") by PG

PG
ballardw
Super User

I would be tempted first to modify PGStats approach to use similar coding to add a flag variable or two and then look at results for other questions and see what the responses of these questionable participants look like compared with the rest. Depending on collection method you might be seeing something like "I don't want to answer this particular question but didn't give me that as a choice".

There may also be a technological reason, depending on how the survey was administered, where the first response was propogated to other questions when the respondent skipped the remainder.

Also a third thing if you didn't have control on the data entry/collection is a possible change in the collection insturment.

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