How do I create a composite of items?

How do I create a composite of items?

You composite questions into 1 variable by averaging together all the individual questions. - Imagine you have 5 questions designed to measure a person's current (negative) emotional state, such as "How strongly do you feel each of the following emotions? Sad, Upset, Depressed, Anxious, Nervous." You have data for all 5 questions, so you can average all 5 questions together to create 1 composite encapsulates how the participant feels at the moment.
However, before you can average all the items together, the items first need to be on the same scale range, and reverse coded, if necessary. See How do I create a composite with items with different scale ranges? and How do I create a composite with items labeled in opposite directions?