item-rest correlation using Spearman?

[Samuel Arnold]

Hi, I'm wondering if there is a way to get item-rest correlation, as you get from the command

alpha item1-10, item

but using spearman? I'm assuming alpha uses pearson?

Do I need to do it manually?

Thanks

[Clyde Schechter]

Since the Spearman correlation is just a Pearson correlation of the ranks of the variables, you could calculate the rank-scores of the variables and then run -alpha- on those.

[Samuel Arnold]

Thanks Clyde, sorry don't quite understand, what would be the code to do that?

[Nick Cox]

forval j = 1/10 {
     egen rank`j' = rank(item`j')
}

alpha rank*, item

This code assumes that you have item1 item2 ... item10 and no existing variable rank. or whose name starts with rank. If that is wrong, use different variable names.

The syntax

alpha item1-10, item

looks illegal to me, while something like

alpha item1-item10, item

may be what you really used.

[Samuel Arnold]

Awesome thank you!