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Article #263

unweighted mean of means

#263
From: Daniel Read
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 12:15
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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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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
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