Rensis Likert was instrumental in founding the Institute for Social
Research at the University of Michigan in the mid 1940s. He was truly
a pioneer statistician and psychologist. He retired from Michigan in
1970 and passed away in 1981. Variants of his 1 to 5 or 1 to 7 scale
are still found on many questionnaires in spite of the question about
scaling, equal distances, etc. His studies on leadership and and
production still hold interest.
On 6 Sep 2001 14:48:44 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dennis Roberts) wrote:
>we do have a semantics problem with terms like this ... scale ... and
>confuse sometimes the actual physical paper and pencil instrument with the
>underlying continuum on which we are trying to place people
>
>so, even in likert's work ... he refers to THE attitude scales ... and then
>lists the items on each ... thus, it is easy to see an equating made
>between the collection of items ... nicely printed ... BEING the scale ...
>
>but really, the scale is not that ... one has to think about the SCORE
>value range ... that is possible ... when this physical "thing" (nicely
>printed collection of items) is administered to Ss ...
>
>thus ... for 10 typically response worded likert items with SA to SD ...
>the range of scores on the scale might be 10 to 50 ... of which any
>particular S might get any one of those values somewhere along the continuum
>
>but of course, scale is even "deeper" than that since, what we really have
>is a psychophysical problem ... that is, what is the functional
>relationship that links the physical scale ... 10 to 50 ... to the
>(assumed to exist) underlying psychological continuum ...
>
>PHYSICAL SCALE 10 (NEGATIVE) <--------------------------------> 50
>(POSITIVE)
>
>PSYCHOLOGICAL
>CONTINUUM MOST NEGATIVE <-------------------------------->
>MOST POSITIVE
>
>problems like ... do equal distances along the physical scale ... equate to
>the same and equal distances along the psychological continuum? is there a
>linear relationship between these two? curvilinear?
>
>so, i think what we really mean by scale is this construct ... ie, the
>psychological continuum ... and a scale value would be where a S is along
>it ... but, about the best we can do to "assess" this is to see where the S
>is along the physical scale ... ie, where from 10 to 50 ... and use this as
>our PROXY measure ...
>
>BUT IN any case ... i think it is helpful NOT to call the actual instrument
>... the paper and pencil collection of items ... THE scale ...
>
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________
>dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university
>208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
>
>
>
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