Hi Francis
> Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 17:58:46 -0500
> From: Francis Owusu <[email protected]>
> Subject: st: Using Cronbach's alpha to generate sub scales.
>
> Hi all,
>
> I need help using Stata to calculate Cronbach's alpha. I have data on
> different measures of performance and I want to group them into
> subgroups for further analysis.
This sounds like a job for -factor- analysis. Worth a try before you
set up the subgroups
> I have 2 problems:
>
> 1. Several of the questions were in negative, however in many cases,
> the negatives were not reversed in the calculation even though I did
not include "asis" command. Any suggestions?
The reversing in the calculation is empirically driven and not
automatic - the algorithm did not 'think' they should be reversed. In
version 8 there is a reverse() option; otherwise do the reversing
yourself using -recode- or -replace- (or -gen- a new var and use that).
> 2. All of the survey questions are not on the same scale, so I
> include
> "std" command to standardize the items before summing. However, the
> new
> variable generated for the new scale had many negative scores. I
> know that
> the scale should not be in negative. What would you advise?
The std command 'centres' variables on zero, so the std-ised variables
will then contain negative values (perhaps half, if the var is normally
distributed!) and so will the resulting scale.
Advice - personally I wouldn't worry about the negative values, and if
I did I'd do the standardisation/summation using normal data derivation
commands.
Steve
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