I am a bit confused as how to derive information from two dependent 7-point likert type questions.

The First question asks : How important is the activity to you? The second question aksa: How successful were you in the activity?

The idea here is that I want to say mathimatically that success in activities important to the person are more fulfilling then in unimportant activities. However I also want to say that failure to succed is more devestating in more important activities than less important ones.

I was thinking to label the first scale (1 to 7) and the second (-3 to 3) and then multiply them, But I need some reference in orer to do this

SO my two questions are

1) Am I on the right track 2) can someone provide a source justifying what i'm doing here

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    $\begingroup$ It looks that you aren't about testing your supposition about fulfilment, only want to claim it, by means of creating a corresponding index. Then your idea is right, for me. At least one of possible ones. I don't think that anybody can ask you sources to justify it. It is obvious mathematically. Weighting is multiplication. $\endgroup$ – ttnphns Mar 9 '17 at 6:45
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    $\begingroup$ Note that your idea is OK if you agree to treat likert rating scale as interval (not ordinal) $\endgroup$ – ttnphns Mar 9 '17 at 6:47

Your approach works only if you want to assume your variables are on the interval scale. I don't think it's a reasonable assumption because the differences between values can't be quantified.

You have several possibilities:

  • Gamma (concordance and discordance)
  • Kendall's tau-b
  • Somer's D
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