Perhaps you should check out the mesa site at U Chicago,
http://mesa.spc.uchicago.edu/ for another take on things. Actually I have
studied psychophysical scaling, have read Likert, Thurstone, and Guttman's
original papers, and learned from another classic text, Guilford, 1954. Of
course, the point is to scale people on attitudes but if yoy wish to have a
scale that is not sample dependent and has better psychometric properties.
While I have long used summated rating scales I am beginning to appreciate
the advantages of some of the new-fangled, more old fashioned methods of
scaling.
At 02:15 PM 5/17/00 -0400, you wrote:
>i guess i don't see it exactly like this ... attitudes have never been
>about stimuli ... but people ... people have attitudes ... stimulus objects
>don't ...
>
>in edwards book, which by the way is perhaps the best (so what if it is
>old?) book on this topic ... he quotes thurstone (paraphrasing) as
>defining an attitude as: '... any symbol, phrase, slogan, person,
>institution, ideal or idea WHICH PEOPLE CAN DIFFER ... WITH RESPECT TO
>POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE AFFECT ... '
>
>even if we scale the items ... ultimately, what we are interested in is
>whether people would agree or disagree with some characterization OF a
>stimulus ... that is, would see the stimulus in a negative or positive light
>
>and, even with rasch modeling (and fancier models) ... yes we do scale
>items in the sense (cognitive tests for example) in terms of difficulty
>BUT, the goal is to be able to use those items to scale the people ... on
>some trait of interest
>
>i wish more people would have a good study of edwards classic book in this
area
>
>allen edwards, techniques of attitude scale construction, 1957,
>appleton-century-crofts, inc
>
>and also actually read likert's work ... to see what he said and did not
>say ... rensis likert, a technique for the measurement of attitudes,
>archives of psychology, #140, june 1932 ...
>
>but that's just my take on things
>
>
>
>At 11:52 AM 5/17/00 -0500, Paul R Swank wrote:
>>The methods of attitude scale construction have gone full circle it seems.
>>The original work (Thurstone) evolved out of psychophysical scaling where
>>the stimuli were scaled first. Then came Likert with summated rating scales
>>that were much easier to construct because the items did not have to be
>>scaled first. Now we have Rasch modeling and IRT where we are scaling
>>stimuli first again. These procedures are much more mathematically complex
>>than the original (psychophyical) ones because now, with the aid of
>>computers, we can do it.
>
>Dennis Roberts, EdPsy, Penn State University
>208 Cedar Bldg., University Park PA 16802
>Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], AC 814-863-2401, FAX 814-863-1002
>WWW: http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
>FRAMES: http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drframe.htm
>
>
>
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------------------------------------
Paul R. Swank, PhD.
Professor & Advanced Quantitative Methodologist
UT-Houston School of Nursing
Center for Nursing Research
Phone (713)500-2031
Fax (713) 500-2033
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