Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:35:07 -0600
Reply-To: Evan Harrington <EHarrington@thechicagoschool.edu>
Sender: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Evan Harrington <EHarrington@thechicagoschool.edu>
Subject: Re: Categorizing study participants based on their scores on
summated scales (non-SPSS question).
In-Reply-To: A<003201cbb08c$b67a9cf0$6402a8c0@xonee30d091b01>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
In addition to the comments of other listmembers, you might consider
conducting a quick read of John Tukey's view on exploratory data
analysis. He published a classic, titled Exploratory Data Analysis
(referred to as EDA) in which he promoted an alternative view to
standard null hypothesis significance testing. His discussions of
exploration of data, and his use of the box plot and other devices,
might provide you with some guidance on where to draw your arbitrary
demarcations for "high" and "low".
Evan R. Harrington, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Forensic Thesis Track Director
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
Department of Forensic Psychology
325 North Wells Street
Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 312 329-6693
Fax: 312 661-1272
________________________________
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Faiz Rasool
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 12:08 AM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Categorizing study participants based on their scores on
summated scales (non-SPSS question).
Hi all,
The research textbooks I've read so far, do not provide a guideline on
how to categorize study participants into categories like low, moderate
and high, open to change, somewhat open to change and not at all open to
change, based on the scores they have obtained on the summated scale.
To give more clarity to my question, I'll describe the confusion that
I'm facing in my own research on conservation behaviors. Variables like
attitudes towards conservation, awareness of environmental problems and
influence of others on conservation behaviors are all part of my
research. I've constructed scales to measure these variables. I'm having
confusion in categorizing participants into different categories based
on their scores. I'll use an example of a five question scale to
further clarify my question. I've constructed a scale of 5 questions,
It provides 4 standard Likert type responses, i.e. strongly disagree to
strongly agree. Since the scale has 5 questions the maximum score
possible is 20 and 5 is the lowest possible score. But I'm unable to
find any guideline on the following things:
What criteria should I use other than personal judgment to decide that
on what is the score based on which participants can be placed in high
or low category. Should scores between 16 and 20 imply high, scores 11
to 15 moderate and scores between 5 to 10 low? Of course the responses
are coded in a way that higher scores means that the conservation
behavior and conservation attitudes are high. I plan to use the scores
on the scale to use in regression analysis, and if assumptions of
regression are not met, then I'd want to use those scores to make
categories and use test like chi-square.
Any suggestions and comments are most appreciated.
Thanks and regards,
Faiz.
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