Likert scale mean and sd

[Jai]

Hi,
I'm trying to find the mean of all my data and don't seem to be able to get my head around how.

I am measuring two groups, those with cars and those without. People from those groups were asked to indicate their attitudes towards certain behaviour on a likert scale. Those attitudes are grouped into positive and negative.

I want to find the total mean and SD for all of the attitude responses for each of the two groups, not the individual means and SD's.
Basically I want to end up with:

Positive attitudes - people with cars - mean - SD
Negative attitudes - people with cars - mean - SD
Positive attitudes - people without cars - mean - SD
Negative attitudes - people without cars - mean - SD

I can't seem to get the totals just the individual question totals for each. I'm aiming to do a independent t test with these results but at the moment the t test shows the results of each individual question but I'd like the total to compare against other groups of data. I hope that makes sense.

Can anyone tell me how to get the total mean and sd for my data set please?

[lorb]

I think I don't really understand what you want but are you maybe looking for the functionality that is provided by "Data -> Split File" ?

besides that I may point out that (at least in my field) likert scales are usually seen as being of ordinal scale type and so have no mean (only metric variables have a mean)

[Berley]

You aren't really looking at 4 groups. You have 2 groups (the independent variable -- whether or not they have a car). Now you want to see if there's a difference between those with and those without.

I think what you're looking for is a means difference. Select "Analyze" then "Compare Means" then "Means." The question (or questions) about happiness go in the dependent variable list and the question about car ownership goes on the independent list. Then click OK.

Is that what you're trying to find?