Protobi

← All blog posts

View post

<p>Ever review your data and wonder "What?!  How did I get a mean of 2.13 on a 2-point scale?"</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-08-28-recode/q1-before.png"  style="width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<p>Surveys sometimes code special values like "Not asked" or "Don't know" as integers like <code>9</code>, <code>-9</code> or <code>99</code>.
These can definitely throw off your analysis. </p>
<p>Here's how to fix them in Protobi...</p>

<h2 id="recode-special-values">Recode special values</h2>
<p>Recode special values to either missing ("[NA]") or any non-integer value. 
That way they won't count toward the mean.</p>
<p>Press the circle icon and from the context menu choose "Recode...".
This will bring up the recode dialog:</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-08-28-recode/q1-recode-a.png"  style="width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<p>Here drag the special values, such as <code>9</code> in this case, to the blue "New code" button.
You can enter <code>[NA]</code> which will recode these values as missing/blank values.
Or you can enter a string like <code>DK</code>. Either way, it's not a number so it won't count toward the mean:</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-08-28-recode/q1-recode-b.png"  style="width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<p>Here we can see the mean now falls between 1 and 2 as expected:
<img src="/images/blog/2018-08-28-recode/q1-recode-after.png"  style="width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<h2 id="format-special-values">Format special values</h2>
<p>After recoding we still see an entry for the old value even though it has 0% responses.
This is because it's still mentioned in the format. </p>
<p>To remove that, press the circle edit icon and from the context menu choose "Format...".
Within this dialog, press the 'x' to remove the entry for  <code>"9 - Don't know/Refused (VOL.)"</code>.</p>
<p><img src="/images/blog/2018-08-28-recode/q1-format.png"  style="width:360px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>
<h2 id="result">Result</h2>
<p>You'll now see the distribution with the correct mean and a human-readable display for the special value:
<img src="/images/blog/2018-08-28-recode/q1-format-after.png"  style="width:480px; max-width:480px; display: block;vertical-align:top"></p>

Publishing

Date

Status

Slug edit

Content

Thumbnail

Categories Manage

Tools

AI Database

Publishing

Content

Tools

Danger zone