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Imagine that you are using Forsyth’s Ethics Position Questionnaire (click the link
to see the questionnaire) in some of your research. According to Forsyth, the first ten
items on this scale measure ethical idealism and the second ten items measure ethical
relativism. You want to see if the data you have collected are consistent with the idea
that these items measure two different constructs.
Retrieve the data file, EPQ.sav, from my SPSS Data Files Page and bring it into
SPSS.
Item-Analysis-SPSS.doc
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Now click Extraction. For Method, select Alpha factoring. Analyze the
Correlation matrix, Display the Unrotated factor solution, Extract Number of factors = 2,
Continue
Now click Rotation. Select Method = Varimax and display the rotated solution
and the loading plot. Click Continue.
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Now click Options and indicate that Missing Values should be excluded Listwise
and that the coefficients should be Sorted by size.
Item Analysis
Click Analyze, Scale, Reliability. Scoot the first ten items into the Items box.
5
Click Statistics and select Descriptives for Scale if item deleted. Continue. OK.
Now remove items 1 through 10 from the Items box and replace them with items
11 through 20. OK.
Look at the output for the first ten items. Cronbach’s alpha is .74, an acceptable
value for a research instrument. Notice that Item 10 is troublesome. It has a low item-
total correlation and alpha would increase if we were to remove Item 10 from the scale.
Item 7 also has a low item-total correlation, which is especially distressing, since I think
that item taps an important part of ethical idealism, cost/benefit analysis when making
ethical decisions. Frankly, I think this instrument needs some additional work, but I
have not found the time to do it myself.
The output for the second ten items also shows an acceptable alpha, .73. Items
11 and 18 have low item-total correlations, and their deletion would increase alpha.
October, 2006.