I cannot seem to find consensus on the following so hopefully someone can shed some light on it. I have 5-point Likert scale Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree.

My question is measuring privacy attitude using a construct that contains 10 privacy indicators (researched separately). I am trying to create a privacy score so i can later do a correlation analysis - those who have a higher privacy score are more likely going to have a higher privacy activism score (another construct).

Without going into to much detail I cant seem to figure out the correct way to do the score. The most common approach seems to be a sum all the items in the construct (measuring privacy). However i am concerned about the undecided (neither agree nor disagree) group.

How should i rank that subset of responses. Logic would have it to be coded as 0 given they have not really answered the question? other literature suggests it should be 3.

My concern is, if (hypothetically) i have 30% of undecided and 20% strongly agree or agree, then the privacy score isn't really reflecting a persons desire for privacy because the undecided is scored at 3, pushing up the score.

SO the question is what to score the undecided group so i can create a summed score that accurately represents the response

thus, 1 = Strongly Agree 2 - Agree 3 = undecided 4 - disagree 5 - Strongly disagree

I would be grateful for any literature or suggestions i could reads regarding this.

Thanks to all who respond in advance

I cannot seem to find consensus on the following so hopefully someone can shed some light on it. I have 5-point Likert scale Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree.

My question is measuring privacy attitude using a construct that contains 10 privacy indicators (researched separately). I am trying to create a privacy score so I can later do a correlation analysis - those who have a higher privacy score are more likely going to have a higher privacy activism score (another construct).

Without going into to much detail I can't seem to figure out the correct way to do the score. The most common approach seems to be a sum all the items in the construct (measuring privacy). However I am concerned about the undecided (neither agree nor disagree) group.

How should I rank that subset of responses. Logic would have it to be coded as 0 given they have not really answered the question? other literature suggests it should be 3.

My concern is, if (hypothetically) I have 30% of undecided and 20% strongly agree or agree, then the privacy score isn't really reflecting a persons desire for privacy because the undecided is scored at 3, pushing up the score.

SO the question is what to score the undecided group so I can create a summed score that accurately represents the response

thus, 1 = Strongly Agree 
2 - Agree 
3 = undecided 
4 - disagree 
5 - Strongly disagree

I would be grateful for any literature or suggestions I could reads regarding this.