Ask Phil SPSS removing 'neutral' cases from a likert scale Video Lecture

got a question from carry on guess what
data entry is a way to remove the
neutral score so a three in a five-point
scale or a four in a seven-point scale
from the data in order to split the
overall score into one of two groups for
example those who've mostly lower score
into one group and those with mostly
higher scores in the other yep you cure
cancer here's an example I'll do a
five-point scale so here we've got six
cases you can see that two of them the
so-called neutral scores three I'll show
you how to take those out of your
analysis you go data select cases and
then we use the if command so clicking
on if command we've got the Select cases
box we take our question over and then
we want to choose not three so anything
any responses that are not three so we
click on this guy here and three and
okay continue then we click ok and what
you can see now is that case two and
four have been struck out there's also
another column here the filter which is
what you've created just to say what
they will bear which of the cases have
and not have not been selected so now if
we kind of just do a quick analysis say
we look at the frequency command analyze
descriptives frequencies and take the
question one it's a variable box and we
just look at the display the frequency
table okay now now you can see in your
frequency table you've got 1 2 4 5 so 3
has been taken out we started off with
six cases two were taken out so now got
a total of four and valid responses for
and now for any other of your analysis
those two cases will just be live
treated as if they're not there so
simple as that