Project Phase III Q&A

Update:
A more recent email with similar Qs:

Hi Professor,

Hope you’re well!

I’m writing to ask some help with the data cleaning of the Project’s Phase III data. Can you please help with the following queries?

1. What does it mean when the data field has both blanks as well as “-99” as the response? Thought it was the same thing, yet Q45, for instance, has both fields.

2. Can you please also advise on how to handle coding of ranking/rating questions? Specifically:
a. Q41 – Rating of top two categories of channels watched
b. Q48 – Ranking of only Top 3 brands out of a list of about 10

3. Also, how do we code blank responses (especially for interval or ratio scaled questions)?
a. Do we put a “0” or leave it blank?
b. How does SPSS handle zeroes vs. blanks?

Please advise.

My response:

Hi A and Team,
1. "-99" means respondent has seen the Q but chosen to ignore it. Blank means the respondent never saw the Q, i.e. the skip logic didn't lead him/her to the Q in the first place.


2. Q41 - select multiple options is what was done for the tv channel Q. So, folks have selected 2 (and some have selected more than 2). There is no ranking implicit in what was chosen.

Q48 - I'll download this Q afresh so that the rankings are visible. At present, under 'download as labels', we are unable to see the rankings.

3. a. Depends on how many blanks are there. If the entire row is blank, drop that row. The Q was not relevant to the respondent and hence qualtrics skipped those Qs for him/her. If a few columns here and there are at "-99", then either impite mean/median for that column or "0" for "do not know". Its a call you have to take given the context the Q arises in.

b. Doesn't handle them very well but allows you to do some basic ops. SPSS will ask whether you want to exclude cases (i.e. rows) with missing observations or whether you would rather replace the missing cells with the column means. Choose wisely and proceed.

Am sending the Q48 ranking data afresh to the AAs for an LMS upload. Should be up for viewing and download soon. Use the respondent ID to vlookup and match like rows in the master dataset you are currently working on.

Hope that clarified things somewhat.
Sudhir

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Got this email from a team:

Dear Chandana,
Phase 3 project requires a 40 slide PPT as our deliverable. I would like to get the following things clarified:
a)      Is 40 the minimum or maximum limit. It seems too big a task.
b)      Can we generate output tables of tools such as Cluster and Factor analysis and include it as per the content of the PPT or is it that the tables be part of the appendix alone.
c)       Is secondary data analysis mandatory/allowed/is optional. Since the entire survey cannot cover a limit of 40 slides through a primary survey alone.
Kindly help in getting these points clarified as we are in the process of finalizing our approach.

My response:

Hi Team G,
1. The 40 slide limit is the upper limit. Feel free to have your final PPT deliverable less than 40 slides long.
2. There is little point in pasting SPSS output tables for factor.cluster analyses inside the 40 slide limit, IMHO. I'd rather groups present the interpretation/info/insight that emerges from such techniques. A hyperlink to the appendices that contain the SPSS tables shouldn't hurt at all, though.
3. Secondary data usage is welcome as long as the sources are documented and cited meticuluously.
IMHO, the main challenges arise in deciding upon a suitable D.P. and its constituent R.O.s. What follows is straightforward once these are set. I'd say, don't be overly ambitious in defining your D.P. nor overly shallow in scope either.
I hope that clarified things at least somewhat. Pls feel free to write in with queries as and when.

Regards,

Sudhir