st: Coding scale items for factor analysis

[Sanja Lutzeyer <slutzey@ncsu.edu>]

> I have a question in my survey in which I ask people about the impacts they think wind energy will have on a number of economic indicators.
> These factors are coded on a 6 point scale:
> Increase a lot ; Increase ; No Impact ; Decrease ; Decrease a lot ;Not sure
> Items I have are, for example, Coastal Tourism and Electricity Prices.
> I have a number of these items and would like to run a factor analysis on these items so as to include a summary value of a factor in my regression rather than adding each item individually.
> How do I code these items with this scale for factor analysis in Stata?
> I was thinking of 
> 1 = Decrease a lot ..... to .... 5 = Increase a lot, but what do I do with NOT SURE?
> Also - an increase in "coastal tourism" would be a good thing, while an increase in "Electricity Prices" would be a bad thing. Does this matter? Do I still code these the same? Or does the order on the coding reverse in some way?
> Any advice would be much appreciated!
> Kind regards
> Sanja
> 

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