measurement scales and attitudes

8/13/2019 Measurement Scales and Attitudes

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Measurement, Scales and

Attitudes


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Nominal


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Ordinal?


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Interval


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Ratio


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Types of Scales

Nominal - Identification only

Ex (players numbers, male=1 female=0)

Ordinal -Ranking

Ex (grades?) SEI score

IntervalRanks and distinguishes intervals

Ex (temperature)

Ratioabsolute quantities

Ex (weight, degrees Kelvin)


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You Try

Which college is your major housed in?

1. CLS 2. CBA 3. SAH

How much money did you spend on alcohol at

the bars in the last 7 days?_____Dollars

Or answer categories

1. $0-10 2. $11-20 3. $21 +


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Practice Problems


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Appropriate Statistical Analysis

Scale matters.

Usually


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Index Measures

Conglomerates of questions

Mapping multiple responses to a single metric

Consumer Sentiment Index


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Good Measurement

Reliable

Valid

Sensitive


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Wrong


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Validity-reliability bulls eye (Babbie, 1998)

Both

valid & reliable Reliable,

but invalid


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Reliability

Degree to which measures are free from error


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Reliability

Repeatability

Test-Retest method- High correlation suggests

stability/reliability


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Reliability

Internal Consistency

Split-half method- take results form even

questions and compare to odd number questions

Equivalent form- asking different but equivalent

questions of a group, and comparing their

answers on the separate questions


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Validity

the ability to measure that which you intend

to measure

Reliability is a necessarycondition for validity,

not sufficient

Example - if the scale always reads 5 pounds too

much. It is reliable, but not a valid measure of

weight.


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Types of Validity

Content (Face) validity- agreement that a scaleaccurately measures that which it is intendedto

Criterion validity- the ability of a measure tocorrelate highly with another measure of thesame construct

Concurrent validity- measures made concurrently

Predictive validity- correlates with future measure

Construct validity- The ability of a measure toconfirm a network of related hypothesis


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Types of Validity

Content (Face) validity- agreement that a scale

accurately measures that which it is intended

to


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Types of Validity

Criterion validity- the ability of a measure to

correlate highly with another measure of the

same construct

Concurrent validity- measures made concurrently

Predictive validity- correlates with future measure


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Types of Validity

Construct validity- The ability of a measure to

confirm a network of related hypothesis


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Sensitivity

a measurements ability to measure variability

in stimuli

Without variability in response we have

nothing of interest.

We can classify but not understand or explain


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Attitude Measurement

Attitudean enduring disposition which

contains these components:

Affective (emotional)

Cognitive (reason)

Behavioral (action)

Example (sexual identity)

Hypothetical Construct


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Male Sex Behavior and

Identification

Total 33 10 1 213 1 256normal/straight 1 0 64 65something else 1 2 4 7bisexual 4 3 1 8

homosexual 22 0 2 24heterosexual 5 5 1 142 1 152

identification exclusive both male exclusive Total rs sexual year gender of sex ps in the last

Col1 exclusively male

Col 2 both

Col 3 exclusively female


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Female Sex Behavior and

Identification

Col1 exclusively male

Col 2 both

Col 3 exclusively female

Total 1 531 7 19 1 557normal/straight 87 1 0 88something else 7 0 5 12

bisexual 4 2 2 8homosexual 1 0 8 9heterosexual 1 432 4 4 1 440

identification exclusive both male exclusive Total rs sexual year gender of sex ps in the last. tab sxident sexsex if gender==0


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Male Sexual Attraction and

Identification

Total 1 396 43 9 11 37 1 496normal/straight 74 2 0 0 3 79something else 5 1 2 2 1 11

bisexual 2 3 5 1 0 11homosexual 1 1 0 8 17 27

heterosexual 1 314 36 2 0 16 1 368identification only wome mostly wo both wome mostly me only men Total

rs sexual is r attracted to males or females


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Female Sexual Attraction and

Identification

Total 7 11 15 50 1 803 1 886normal/straight 1 0 0 0 116 117something else 3 0 1 1 7 12

bisexual 0 2 5 3 0 10homosexual 2 9 1 0 0 12heterosexual 1 0 8 46 1 680 1 735

identification only wome mostly wo both wome mostly me only men Total rs sexual is r attracted to males or females. tab sxident attract if gender==0


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Practice Problems

Drinking Alcohol

Religion

Music


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Concept Measurement

Awareness:measure of knowledge; understanding;familiarity

Behavior:measure of actions/choices that took place

Motivation:measure of why people behave as they do

Opinion:measure of belief or attitude Preference:measure of likes/dislikes

Desire:measure of wants

Interest:measure of concerns/curiosities

Intention:measure of anticipated behavior Demographic:measure of respondents characteristics

Perceptions of above?


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What is Most Appropriate?


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Methods of Measuring Attitudes

Rating

Likert Scalecarefully constructed attitudinal

measure which asks people for their agreement

with a statement

Example: Please rate each of the following, on a

scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being least importantand 10 being most important


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Methods of Measuring Attitudes

Ranking

Rank choices from most important to least

important

Example: Of the following 10 items please

rank them in order of importance, with 1

being least important and 10 being mostimportant.


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Source: http://blog.vovici.com/blog/bid/18228/Ranking-Questions-vs-Rating-Questions


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Sorting

Asks respondents to sort items/names into groups


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Multiple Choice

Provide alternative responses that R might

choose.


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Monadic

Q. How satisfied are you with your current

job?

1. Very Satisfied

2. Somewhat Satisfied

3. Not Very Satisfied


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Comparative

Q. Compared to your current job how much

responsibility did you have at your last job?

1. More

2. About the Same

3. Less


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How many categories are needed?


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Balanced

Q. How satisfied are you with your current cable

service?

1. Very Satisfied2. Somewhat Satisfied

3. Somewhat unsatisfied

4. Very unsatisfied


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Unbalanced

Q. How satisfied are you with your current cable

service?

1. Very Satisfied2. Somewhat Satisfied

3. Somewhat unsatisfied


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Forced Choice

Does not allow the respondent to offer no

opinion, which is different than a neutral

opinion


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Unforced Choice

Allows respondents to opt out of providing an

opinion.


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JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

Unless we know how things are counted, we

dont know if its wise to count on the numbers.


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Albert Einstein

Not everything that can be counted counts,

and not everything that counts can be

counted.

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