Here’s a bad plan for combining two questions into an index. The bad index planner wants to measure concern about China, and he decides to use these two ANES variables:

china_econ: effect of China’s economic expansion on U.S.

1. Good 2. Bad 3. No effect china_mil: China’s military threat 1. Major threat 2. Minor threat 3. Not a threat He decides simply to add these two questions together as they are. Clearly explain why this is a bad plan.