Hi Nick, If you haven't just made a typo on your example in QUESTION 2, the "This doesn't" line should read:
cronbach(jdc[,c("Q1","Q2","Q3")]) Without the quotes, R looks for three objects named Q1, Q2 and Q3 and probably doesn't find them. Jim On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Nick Petschek <nick.petsc...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > I have two questions on using cronbach() from the psy() package. > > My simplified situation is the following: I have a survey of 10 questions > (column names are "Q1", "Q2", etc.) that went out to 100+ people. I have > the responses to the questions, plus additional variables (demographics, > location, etc.) in a data frame (named "JDC"). I want to build composite > indices from these 10 questions. I plan to use two steps to create the > indices. First, grouping the questions by what makes intuitive sense given > what they ask, and second, by testing the reliability of these groupings > using cronbach(). > > QUESTION 1 > > Let's say I think Q1, Q3, and Q5 will make a good index. With my limited > knowledge of R, I would think there's a way to say "run the reliability on > these three variables in this dataframe". However, I have so far only been > able to test the reliability of *adjacent *variables. For example, I could > do: > > *cronbach(jdc[,1:3])* > > to test Q1, Q2, and Q3. Is there a way to test non-adjacent variables? > > I realize I could do something like: > > *trust <- jdc[, c("Q2", "Q7", "Q8")]* > *cronbach(trust)* > > but that adds a few extra steps, and I have tons of questions and indices > which would make that very cumbersome, especially since I will go through > several iterations in testing potential indices. > > > QUESTION 2 > > Is there a way to refer to the column name when using cronbach(), instead > of just the location of the variable? For example: > > This works: *cronbach(jdc[,1:3])* > This doesn't:* cronbach(jdc[Q1, Q2, Q3])* > > > Thanks in advance for any insights, answers, words of encouragement, or > alternate ways I could solve this puzzle. > > Nick > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.