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Article #263unweighted mean of means
From: Daniel Read
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 12:15
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 12:15
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1286 bytes
I have some questionnaire data from which I wish to derive a "knowledge index" by taking the mean response to several of the questions. However, these are true-false questions and more of the questions are true than false. Moreover, many people are clearly disposed to choose True as a response rather than False. Of course, to the degree that they have this bias their knowledge index is inflated. I have solved this problem by taking the (unweighted) mean of the mean answer to false questions plus the mean answer to true questions. My question: can you think of anything wrong with doing this? BTW, I realize that taking the "mean" of ordinal responses is problematic, but I'm willing to weather this storm on my own -- which doesn't mean that I am uninterested in comments on that issue. Thanks in advance, daniel
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arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!ogicse!das-news.harvard.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!dr3u+Show Full Headers
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!ogicse!das-news.harvard.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!dr3u+ From: dr3u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Daniel Read) Newsgroups: sci.math.stat Subject: unweighted mean of means Message-ID: <8edG3vu00WBN868HYr@andrew.cmu.edu> Date: 2 Sep 92 12:15:55 GMT Article-I.D.: andrew.8edG3vu00WBN868HYr Organization: Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 19