How do I Analyze Likert Scale Data for differences using JMP?

[#1]

I have a dataset where students were asked 13 questions related on how they saw themselves in 10 years time. The students answered using a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5. I want to find out if there is a difference between how male and female students saw themselves in 10 years time, basically if one group is more optimistic than the other. What would be the best way to go about this in JMP? 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @LucasOpt,

Your approach will depend on what level of measurement you consider your 1-5 ratings to be. If you consider them ordinal measurements, as some regard Likert scales, you will be in the domain of contingency analysis and a chi-square test of independence. If you consider the measurements to be interval scaled (in JMP's terminology, continuous measurements), you're in the domain of tests of means, and specifically here, an independent-samples (aka two-sample) t-test. To carry out either of these analyses (and my preference is for the latter) you'll be using Analyze > Fit Y by X.  To see how to perform these analyses I would recommend looking through the materials in the JMP Learning Library in the section "Basic Inference - Proportions and Means." You will find guides and videos for each of these analyses and will see how JMP needs the data to be arranged. 

I hope this helps!

@julian