Creating one variable from multiple children

[NDFC]

Hello everyone,

I have a large dataset where each case relates to one person. I've collected data on the children of this person (Child 1, Child 2) and have variables such as age of child, care needs of child, who else cares for this child. The problem I have I want to have an overview of the mean age of all of the children, the frequency of all of the care needs of all children, who else cares for all of the children. I don't know how to combine the data from the multiple children? Does anyone have any advice. I imagine this is quite a simple one, but as a newbie I can't figure it out and have been directed to look at derived variables, but this doesn't seem to make much sense here.

Thanks in advance,

NDFC

 

[staassis]

Two of many methods:

Method 1:
_ Step 1: Split the variables into sub-scales, where each sub-scale is a particular characteristic of children 1, 2, 3, etc.
_ Step 2: Recode categorical variables into binary dummy variables.
_ Step 3: Standardize the variables.
_ Step 4: Average the standardized variables in each sub-scale to produce one score per sub-scale.

Method 2: principal components analysis (PCA).

 

[NDFC]

Thanks for this advice, I'm slowly working my way through creating the steps. Since I'm only really looking for descriptive stats here, is there possibly a simpler way to do this? Thanks again

 

[staassis]

Method 1 is as simple as it gets.... You apply descriptive statistics and formal statistical tests to whatever you prepare using the aforementioned methods.