entry of item data

California Inventory for Family Assessment (CIFA)

by Paul D. Werner, Ph.D. and Robert-Jay Green, Ph.D.

Data Entry Instructions for Computer Scoring

(182 item -- 4 point response format)

Entry of item data for 182 item CIFAs

Ascii (Text) entry

1. If you are creating more than one data file, these instructions will need to be followed for each data file. In that case, you should give each data file a distinctive name (e.g., WGHnnn.txt, HGWnnn.txt, where nnn is your CIFA project number).

2. Within each of your data files there will be four data lines representing each set of 182 CIFA responses given by a respondent to describe one relationship. These lines will be grouped together. These will be followed by other sets of 4 lines encoding responses for respondents from other families. In other words, the data will be read in in groups of 4 lines.

Note that if you are using a 200 item CIFA version, including experimental items 183-200, all of your data entry procedures will be the same as those described in this document, except that you will also enter responses to items 183-200 on the last data line for each CIFA.

3. The SPSS scoring and reliability programs expect your data to be in the form of what computer people call an ASCII (or text) file. This is NOT the kind of file that most word processors automatically save. If your file is not in ASCII format, it will not be scoreable by our SPSS syntax files. Most word processors allow you to resave a file you've created into ASCII format, or to convert a file into ASCII format. (Sometimes the conversion program calls this format "Text" format, and assigns the file extension TXT.) Make sure that you will be able to get your item data file into ASCII format BEFORE spending time entering all of your item data.

Here is an easy way of testing a small test data file (12 lines or so) to see if it is an ASCII file.

(a) In DOS: At the DOS prompt, type the following:

TYPE filename.ext <ret>

where "filename.ext" is the name of the file you want to check, and <ret> means "carriage return (enter)."

(b) In Windows, open the file filename.ext using the windows note pad.

If what appears on your screen looks exactly like the file that you've just entered, as it looked when you were in your word processor, you probably have made an ASCII file. If there are strange looking symbols, if the columns of data do not align, or if there are extra lines (especially with unexpected words in them), you do not have an ASCII file.

Here's another hint, if you are using a Windows word processor to enter your data. Choose the Courier New 10 point typeface, and set your margins wide enough so you can get as many as 80 columns of data entered per line. (You may need to use the File-Page Setup command to change your paper orientation to "landscape" in order to have lines 80 columns wide.) With the Courier typeface, all characters have the same width. This means that all columns will align down the screen, making it easier for you to catch "obvious" entry errors.

4. For the four lines in your data file representing the set of 182 CIFA responses comprising one CIFA relationship description, the data should be entered in accordance with the specifications on the next pages.

5. Each of your data lines should end with a carriage return ("Enter" key). There should be no extra blank lines in your data files -- not at the beginning of the file, not at the end of the file, and not between cases. So if you are entering data for 3 CIFAs, you will have 12 data lines in your data file, each of which will end with a carriage return.

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