How do I create a composite of items?
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How do I create a composite of items?
- You composite questions into 1 variable by averaging together all the individual questions.
- Imagine you have 5 questions designed to measure a person's current (negative) emotional state, such as "How strongly do you feel each of the following emotions? Sad, Upset, Depressed, Anxious, Nervous." You have data for all 5 questions, so you can average all 5 questions together to create 1 composite encapsulates how the participant feels at the moment.
- However, before you can average all the items together, the items first need to be on the same scale range, and reverse coded, if necessary. See How do I create a composite with items with different scale ranges? and How do I create a composite with items labeled in opposite directions?
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