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We did a survey for elementary students with items such as...

I like math: Yes, no, I don't know

We have about 40 questions, and we want to analyze differences in respondents answers from a pre-survey to a post-survey. The issue is that we don't know how to classify "I don't know". What are our options for analysis?

User1865345
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MathGuy
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  • What classes are you currently using? If you just have raw text, you’ll need to figure this part out first. – jbuddy_13 Dec 20 '22 at 15:45
  • I'm not sure what you mean by "classes". The survey was check-box style with yes, no, I don't know. The survey has 3 sub scales. – MathGuy Dec 20 '22 at 15:50
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    You can use ordered categorical variables. No, idk, yes are three classes so you have a categorical variable. Using ordered categorical variables allows you to introduce a sense of spectrum where idk is between yes and no, effectively maybe, somewhat, etc. – jbuddy_13 Dec 20 '22 at 18:23

1 Answers1

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The simplest thing to do is to treat the response as a categorical variable with three possible outcomes. You might arguably say that "I don't know" is between "Yes" an "No", in which case you could treat the variable as ordinal, but this really isn't necessary since it is simple to deal with (non-ordered) categorical variables.

It isn't clear from your question whether you have longitudinal data (i.e., whether you can match the responses of individual respondents in the pre- and post- data) and whether the questions in the two runs of the surveys are the same. Assuming all this is true, and excluding cases of missing data, there are $3 \times 3=9$ possible outcomes for the pre- and post- responses for each individual question. Your data should allow you to see which of these nine outcomes occurs for each respondent-question, which should allow you to describe how the answers to questions changed between the pre- and post- surveys.

Ben
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