How to examine group differences on several 5-point items using SPSS? I am trying to analyse a group of 4 questions that are on a 5 point scale.  I need to group the answers for each question based on age.  There are three different ages.  How would I go about doing this?
 A: Here are 3 options; hard brackets need to be filled in, while braces contain optional subcommands:
cross [varlist] by age {/cells count col row}.

means [varlist] by age {/stat anova}.

summarize command - best obtained through the menus via Analyze...Reports...Case Summaries.  Then you may need to double-click the resulting pivot table and right-click ... Pivoting Trays to rearrange.
A: This overlaps largely with what @rolando2 has already said.
General ideas:
Regardless of the software you use, here are some things that you could do:


*

*Compare means on each item across age groups

*Crosstabulate age group by item response (for each item); you are probably most interested in the proportion of each item response within an age group.


Further considerations:


*

*Do the four items form a scale? If so, you may want to create a composite based on the items, and compare means for each age group

*Do you wish to run statistical tests of significant group differences? if so, you'll most likely be interested in ANOVAs and follow-up tests looking at the effect of group on item means (but be aware of debates about the appropriateness of using means on ordinal items).

