Hi Gu,
This depends on the context, usually. The question I would ask myself is
whether or not "Don't Know" is valid/interesting response to the question
being asked or if it just indicates that the survey didn't collect that
piece of information. If there *is* a response, but we just didn't observe
it, then that's definitely missing. If it's unclear whether or not there is
a response, then you may not wan to treat it as missing.
For imputation, you can include the DKs in the variable and treat it as a
categorial/nominal variable for imputation and so Amelia would create a set
of dummy variables for each category (1-7 plus DK). What isn't possible in
Amelia is to combine ordinal information with the DK.
Cheers,
Matt
On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 4:59 PM, Gu Li <ligu.sysu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dear list members,
I realize that this is perhaps more of a conceptual issue than a practical
one, but I wonder how would you deal with survey responses such as "don't
know" or "not applicable." Specifically:
(1) Do you regard "don't know" and "not applicable" as missing?
(2) If not, do you regard them as valid responses as
other options (e.g.,
a scale of 1 to 7), and use all these values to impute missing data? That
is, if someone did not answer this item, the imputed value could be don't
know, not applicable, or any value from 1 to 7. If this is the correct
approach, how to do it in Amelia or other software?
(3) Is it possible to only impute the "true" missing data (i.e., not for
"don't know" or "not applicable" responses), with valid
responses from 1 to
7 in Amelia or other software? (Listwise removing participants who select
"don't know" or "not applicable" in one variable before imputing
is not a
good idea because those participants may contribute to MAR/MCAR missing in
other variables.)
(4) Are there other approaches to deal with "don't know" or "not
applicable" responses?
Many thanks for your help!
Gu
--
Gu Li, PhD
Visiting International Research Scholar
University of British Columbia
E-mail: guli(a)alumni.ubc.ca; ligu.sysu(a)gmail.com
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