Read data

When the application is successfully initialized, you have to selected “Data” tab. Once in this window, you have to click “Read Data” button. Also you can import data from File tab and selecting “Open Data”. A new window will be opened, displaying some options:

 

First of all you’ve to select the data file containing data to be analyzed. You can provide data from raw data file or from a dispersion matrix (both options from .dat file in ASCII code or excel file). When you select the file by browse button, it automatically display the number of participants and items if raw data is provided or only the number of items if you provide a dispersion matrix. If data contains missing values, you’ve to assign a unique value to these (for example: 999) and specify in this window the option “The data file contains missing values” and define the previously determined value.

Additionally, you can provide a file containing the item labels (.txt file, on every row define the label from one item) and semi-specified rotation target matrix (.dat file in ASCII code). Both of these optional files have to be consistent in the number of items from the data file. Additionally, if you’ve imported data from .xls or .xlsx file which contains headers, you can use it as labels.

Once everything is well defined, click “OK” button in order to import the provided data. If some inconsistency is found in the process, it’s possible that some error message shows up.

In any case, the number of participants and variables must been defined, even when a dispersion matrix is provided, in order to adjust some analysis by the original sample size.

Dataset analyzed in this tutorial

The example data is extracted from a sample of OPERAS (Vigil-Colet, Morales-Vives, Camps, Tous & Lorenzo-Seva, 2013) responders. Only includes the items related to extraversion, agreeableness and social desirability. More precisely, this sample includes 599 participants and contains 19 items: 1 dummy item, 7 extraversion related items, 7 agreeableness related items and also 4 social desirability markers. The response format is 5-point Likert, and we will consider a multidimensional solution (Agreeableness, Extraversion and Social Desirability).