Variables

Adjustment of the attributes of the variables are explained in details in this section. For the demographic variables, the details are explained as below:

• AGE 
• Respondents' age is a nominal variable. Therefore for the variable TYPE in SPSS, the choice for "Measure" column is NUMERIC.  In the "Label" column, the details of the variable "AGE" is labelled as "AGE OF RESPONDENTS".

• SEX

• The gender of respondents is also a nominal variable. Therefore for the variable TYPE in SPSS, the choice for "Measure" column is NUMERIC.
• In the "Label" column, the details of the variable "SEX" is labelled as "RESPONDENTS' GENDER"
• However, since the respondents consist of Female and Male, therefore there is a need to specified the value of the variables in VALUE column. In this scale, "1" is assigned for "female"and "2" is assigned for "male". This steps can be explained as illustrated below:

• MOB
• MOB refers to Month of Birth for each participants. This variable is an ordinal variable therefore in the Measure column is assigned as ORDINAL. 
• In the "Label" column, the details of the variable "MOB" is labelled as "MONTH OF BIRTH"

• YOB
• YOB refers to Year of Birth for each participants. This variable is also an ordinal variable therefore in the Measure column is assigned as ORDINAL. 
• In the "Label" column, the details of the variable "YOB" is labelled as "YEAR OF BIRTH"

For the items of the Social Support Scale (SS1 - SS12), the variable type is "SCALE" in the "Measure" column. In the "Value" column, the score of each item is labelled as:

• 1.00 = Very Strongly Disagree
• 2.00 = Highly Disagree
• 3.00 = Disagree
• 4.00 = Neutral
• 5.00 = Agree
• 6.00 = Highly Disagree
• 7.00 = Very Strongly Agree

In Label column, the types of Social Support are labelled to the related items such as:

• 1,2, 5, 10 and 12 : SOCIAL
• 3, 4,  8, and 11 : FAMILY
• 6, 7 and 9 : FRIEND

 In SPSS, the value labels are as illustrated below:

For the items of the Emotional Contagion Scale (EC1 - EC12), the variable type is "SCALE" in the "Measure" column. In the "Value" column, the score of each item is labelled as:

• 1.00 = Never
• 2.00 = Rarely
• 3.00 = Often True
• 4.00 = Always True

In Label column, the types of Emotional Contagion are labelled to the related items such as:

• 2, 3 and 11 : HAPPINESS
• 6, 9, and 12 : LOVE
• 8, 13, and 15 : FEAR
• 5, 7 , and 10 : ANGER
• 1, 4 and 14 : SADNESS

 In SPSS, the value labels are as illustrated below:

For the column "Missing Value", the exception is for the variable labelled as MOB (Month of Birth) and SEX (Respondents' Gender). The missing value for “MOB” is defined as 13 because there are only 12 months in a year, therefore 13 is out of ranged of the values for month of birth that supposed to be inserted. 

For variable SS1 to TOTAL.EC, the missing value is 99 for which that value is also out of ranged from the exact scores that should be keyed in. In SPSS, the missing values are as illustrated below: