If I understand your posting, this is a question about constructing a scale across multiple dimensions. That is, are you trying to tell which locality is based upon one variable or several variable?. If it's one variable than that is the only variable you rank. If it is based upon multiple variables, then you have to create a scale.
When I see rankings like this in magazines (e.g., best places to raise a family), each ranker has a different way of doing it.
Here's one approach.
Convert all of your scalar variables to zscores so that have the same scale.
Are all of your variables scalar, or do you have some that are nominal?
Assign values to categories of your categorical variables to be included in the scale. Good categories get positive numbers and bad categories get negative numbers and then zscore them as well.
Add the zscored variables that are "good dimensions" (e.g., Family Income or your converted categories) and subtract the "bad dimensions" (e.g., Crimes per 1000 population). This gives you a single number that you can then convert into a rank.
If you think that some variables are more important than others, get them a higher weight in the scale by multiplying the zscore by a number while adding it.
Disclaimer: I'm no expert at this but based upon rankings I've seen, this appears to be how some of them are done. Note that they might use a tscore which has a mean of 0 and a standard deviation but the zscore is equivalent and easily produced from the DESCRIPTIVES procedure. Whatever you do, clearly describe your methodology when publishing your results to others.
I hope you've been following the discussions about outliers on this list because you'll want to check your data to make sure that any invalid data doesn't corrupt the rankings.
________________________________
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion on behalf of Smith, Brenda R.
Sent: Fri 8/25/2006 6:32 AM
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: Basic Stat Question
Please help. I have data that I have to compare which has several variables.
I need a way to rank them to tell which locality overall is number one based
on the variable.
I tried just ranking them in ascending order but each column ranks
differently.
Brenda Smith
757.823.8751 (voice)
757.823.2057 (fax)
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