Re: st: Converting ratings to rankings

[David Kantor <kantor.d@att.net>]

At 07:45 PM 6/19/2006, Mike Stern wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I have a programming question:
>
> I have need to convert 8 variables from a social survey that respondents
> rated on a scale from 1 to 7 to implied rankings.  The survey question asks
> respondents to rate 8 items relative to one issue with 1 being much less
> important and 7 being much more important with 4 being just as important
> (conceptual middle point).  Therefore, a ranking needs to be relative to the
> center point and because it now needs to be a ranking 7 needs to be recoded
> to 1, 6 needs to be recoded to 2 and so on.
>
> This would not be a particularly thorny issue except for the fact that
> respondents often rated two or more of the variables at the same level (e.g.
> two or three items given a 5).  For such ratings, I am taking a 1/2 point
> off their ranking.  I have a situation where if respondents rated two items
> 5 (after the recoding needed to convert a rating to ranking--much more
> important now equaling 1 instead of 7 and much less important now equaling 7
> instead of 1 and so on) the two items receive a score of 3.5.
>
> Does anyone know of ways that stata can convert ratings to rankings without
> a large number of "if then" statements for every possible combination of
> duplicate ratings?
>
> Thanks
I would imagine that there is some way to avoid programming all the 
possible combinations, but I am not going to attempt it now.  But I 
will tell you that these "if then" statements that you refer to 
should not actually be written as "if then" statements; instead, you 
should use "if" qualifiers (on gen and replace commands) or the 
cond() function.

For this task, it is preferable to avoid that sort of method if you 
can, but if you do need to use it, be clear about the distinction 
between "if" statements (or commands) and "if" qualifiers.

Good Luck and HTH,
--David

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