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st: creating composite measures


From   "Seth D. Hannah" <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   st: creating composite measures
Date   Thu, 22 Aug 2002 11:54:41 -0700

Can someone help me with creating a composite measure of prejudice from four individual variables in my data set which measure prejudice.
the variables are:

deasyblk: perception of blacks as easy to get along with
dwelfblk: perception of blacks as likely to be on welfare
dintlblk: perception of blacks as intelligent
drichblk: perception of blacks as rich or poor

the variables are distributed as follows:

. tab deasyblk

easy to get along |
w/blacks | Freq. Percent Cum.
---------------------+-----------------------------------
easy to get along w/ | 915 10.26 10.26
2 | 1052 11.80 22.06
3 | 1379 15.47 37.53
neither | 2722 30.53 68.06
5 | 1143 12.82 80.88
6 | 638 7.16 88.03
hard to get along w/ | 547 6.14 94.17
don't know... | 418 4.69 98.86
missing | 102 1.14 100.00
---------------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 8916 100.00

. tab dwelfblk

self-supporting: |
blacks | Freq. Percent Cum.
--------------------+-----------------------------------
prefer self-support | 754 8.46 8.46
2 | 521 5.84 14.30
3 | 879 9.86 24.16
neither | 2132 23.91 48.07
5 | 1723 19.32 67.40
6 | 1332 14.94 82.34
prefer welfare | 1046 11.73 94.07
don't know... | 425 4.77 98.83
missing | 104 1.17 100.00
--------------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 8916 100.00

. tab dintlblk

intelligence: |
blacks | Freq. Percent Cum.
--------------+-----------------------------------
intelligent | 723 8.11 8.11
2 | 807 9.05 17.16
3 | 1597 17.91 35.07
neither | 3259 36.55 71.62
5 | 1255 14.08 85.70
6 | 479 5.37 91.0
unintelligent | 207 2.32 93.39
don't know... | 481 5.39 98.79
missing | 108 1.21 100.00
--------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 8916 100.00

. tab drichblk

rich-poor: |
blacks | Freq. Percent Cum.
--------------+-----------------------------------
rich | 59 0.66 0.66
2 | 193 2.16 2.83
3 | 499 5.60 8.42
neither | 2101 23.56 31.99
5 | 2506 28.11 60.09
6 | 2137 23.97 84.06
poor | 970 10.88 94.9
don't know... | 371 4.16 99.10
missing | 80 0.90 100.00
--------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 8916 100.00

What I want to do is combine these four variables into one measure of prejudice, which will become a dependent variable in some of my models.

The only way I could think to do it was to create a new variable prejblk with numerical values 1 through 7 that equal the sums of the respective 1 through 7's
from my four variables...

gen prejblk=.
replace prejblk=1 if drichblk==1|dwelfblk==1|deasyblk==1|dintlblk==1
replace prejblk=2 if drichblk==2|dwelfblk==2|deasyblk==2|dintlblk==2
etc.

somehow this doesn't seem right, please help!

Seth




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