Reverse Coding in Ocean eForms

Occasionally, when developing scales using Likert-type questions, you will find yourself needing to reverse code some of the items.

For example, an item such as "I don't like working with computers" scored from 1-5 (where 1 is "strongly disagree" and 5 is "strongly agree"), should be re-coded so that the negative answer is associated with the lower score. Re-coding is especially important if the item is being used in a formula to compute a scale score.

In Ocean, your reverse coding formula would be as follows:

New score = (max + min) - response

Example:

You have provided your patient with a 3-question survey scored on a 5 point-scale. Questions 1 and 2 are reverse coded. You would like to calculate a mean score for the survey.

Survey Fesponses:

• Question 1 (q1.p) = 5
• Question 2 (q2.p) = 4
• Question 3 (q3.p) = 1

Ocean Formula:

((6 - q1.p) + (6 - q2.p) + (q3.p)) / 3

Mean Score:

( ( 6 - 5 ) + ( 6 - 4 ) + 1 ) / 3 = 1.33