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How to Treat Nonrespondents as Zeros

Databases and spreadsheet programs allow analysts to quickly process data and generate reports. Occasionally a survey or table might represent a nonrespondent's input with a letter. While using a letter rather than a numerical value allows the database administrator to keep track of exceptions such as nonrespondents, it requires additional work on the analyst's part before generating a report. The analyst must decide how to treat a nonresponse before performing any statistical tests. Learning how to treat nonrespondents as zeros allows you to customize your statistical reports.

Instructions

- 1
  Create a new table that defines nonresponse as zero. For example, in SQL use the query "CREATE TABLE nonrespondent (response varchar(255), value int); INSERT INTO nonrespondent VALUES ('n',0);" without the quotation marks to generate a table that defines the nonresponse "n" as 0.
- 2
  Join the new table to the table of responses at the column "response." For example, in SQL the query "JOIN nonrespondent ON table.response=nonrespondent.response" links the two tables together so SQL can provide a value of 0 to the nonresponse indicator "n."
- 3
  Perform the statistical operation on the table of responses. For example, if you want to find the mean response treating nonrespondents as zeros, then use the SQL query "SELECT AVG(SELECT table.response AND nonrespondent.value FROM table JOIN nonrespondent ON table.response = nonrespondent.response)" without quotation marks.

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