Measurement & Scales - Nature of measurement scales

5 important questions on Measurement & Scales - Nature of measurement scales

Selection of scale requires decisions, in which areas?

- study objective
- response form
- degree of preference
- data properties
- number of dimensions
- scale construction

What general study objectives in measurement does a reseacher face?

- measure certain characteristics of participants
- use participants as judges of objects/indicatns presented to them.

When chosing the response form you can choose the type of scale. What types of scales do you have?

rating (score withouth making comparison), ranking (comparison among two or more indicants), categorization (put it in categories).
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Measurement scales are either uni-dimensional or multi-dimensional, what is the difference?

uni-dimensional: one seeks to measure only one attribute of the participants bject (e.g. promotability of an employee)
multi-dimensional: object might be better described in an attribute space of n-dimensions rather than on one continuum. (e.g. promotability expressed by dimensions managerial performance, tehcnical performance, and teamwork)

What are the construction approaches for scale construction?

- arbitrarty (scale is custom-designed to measure property) --> measure concepts for whch they have been designed.
- consensus (judges evaluate items to be included)
- item analysis (measurement scaled that are tested with a sample of participants)
- cumulative (scale are chosen for their conformity to a ranking of items with ascending and descending discriminating power)
- factoring (scales are constructed from inter-correlations of items of other studies).

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