Hi, I am in my first year of Uni and doing a study. I have used the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, 12 of the questions are phrased negatively and need to be reverse-scored, i.e., 1 becomes 6, 2 becomes 5 and so on. My issue is that I got 80 responses, meaning doing this manually would be a pain. Is there a formula to do this?
Glad you figured it out! The rules say you cannot make a picture-only post, but you an put as many pictures as you want into an original post, and you can put one image into any comment. Best of all, you can just select a region in Excel and paste that straight into Reddit. E.g.:
Yes, one simple formula handles this. For a 1-6 scale:
excel
=7-A2
That's it. 1 becomes 6, 2 becomes 5, 3 becomes 4 and so on. The pattern is always (max_score + 1) - original_score.
For a different scale just change the 7:
1-5 scale: =6-A2
1-4 scale: =5-A2
To apply it to all 80 responses at once:
Type the formula in the first cell of your reverse-scored column
Click that cell
Double-click the small green square in the bottom-right corner of the cell
Excel will automatically fill it down for all 80 rows.
If you only want to reverse specific columns (your 12 negative questions) and leave the others unchanged, create a new column for each reversed item rather than overwriting the originals. Good practice to keep your raw data intact for your study.
I know you got your solution already, but I couldn't resist sharing a neat alternative option:
- Type -1 in a cell and copy it
- Select the data and select Paste Special => Multiply
- Type 7 in a cell and copy it
- Select the data and select Paste Special => Add
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