Thanks for input. You're right. Programmers would probably look for the abolute value of an answer. That's one reason why people sometimes get annoyed with us (I guess I'm thinking of the product managers I've worked with). In any case, this is an existing instrument and was not developed specifically for programmers. I will be very careful. But I will be using it to compare groups of progammers, so the results should have some value.
I know I promised not to discuss, but I couldn't resist. I like discussing our culture. Elena -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list