Using weights
A Weight may be used in several different ways:
- To create means in mean score tables
- To count items other than respondents, such as, amounts of money
- To change the proportions/balance of a sample group
- To increase/decrease the size of a sample group
- As part of a calculation
Multiple Response variables cannot be weighted and you cannot use more than one Weight in a table.
When tables have weights applied to them, and statistics produced, such as significances and confidence intervals, they are calculated using the weighted data not the unweighted.
Defining a weight
Weights consist of a series of codes. They should have the same number of codes as the variable that you are applying the weight to.
-
Click
to display the Weights window.
-
Click
to add a new weight or
on the Weights window toolbar to display the Weight Details dialog for an existing weight.
The image below shows a weight used to transform a five-code rating score into positive and negative values.
- Enter a unique name in the Name field.
- Enter a description of your weight in the Label field.
- Enter the number of decimal places used in a calculation in the Decimal places field.
- Enter the Value for each code in your weight. (Press Tab to create a new code). If you wish to exclude a variable code from the weighting, (e.g.”Don’t Know”) set its value to NA.
-
Click
to save the weight.