How to Set Up Pick, Group, and Rank Questions from Qualtrics in Displayr

This article deals with how to set up Qualtrics' Pick, Group and Rank questions in Displayr when imported from an SPSS file.

Method

A Pick, Group, and Rank question in Qualtrics allows the respondent to group items into two or more categories, and simultaneously rank the items within those groups. The data is stored in pairs of variables for each item, where one stores the group assigned and the other the rank. When imported into Displayr, the data appears as a series of otherwise unstructured pairs of Nominal and Numeric variables.

An example of a Pick, Group, and Rank question set up in Qualtrics might look like this:

In the data, there will be a pair of variables for each of the people who were asked about in this question. There is a Nominal variable, with the label group which stores whether each respondent assigned that person to Love or Hate, and there is a Numeric variable which describes the ranking of that person within the category.

Requirements

Qualtrics data with pick, group, and rank questions imported into Displayr via SPSS.

Method

Looking at the ranking data alone could be misleading, since the rank for each item is stored in a single variable. This means the rankings for the different groups are combined. In the example above, which is an extreme example, it would be misleading to look at the rankings without knowing whether the ranks were for the most-loved personality or for the most-hated personality.

Analyze the rankings for each item

The simplest approach to looking at this data is to cross-tabulate the pair of rank and group variables for each item.

You can create a crosstab with the "Group" variable for a specific item in the table Rows and the corresponding "Rank" variable in the Columns.

When the Rank variable has a Structure of Numeric, this will produce the average rank for the current item/statement. Instead, see the proportion of actual rank positions, and change Structure to Nominal.

Groups as a single table

The group information can be analyzed across the different items by combining the group variables together as a set.

In the Data Sources tree, highlight all the Group variables, and then right-click and select Combine.
Give the variable set a suitable General > General > Label in Properties , and set the Data > Attributes > Structure to Nominal - Multi.
Go to Data > Values & Labels.
For the Label, enter the appropriate group headings. These should match the text at the top of the Qualtrics group boxes.
Click OK.