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Measurement of Constructs - Coggle Diagram
Measurement of Constructs
Conceptualization
Conceptualization is the mental process by which fuzzy and imprecise constructs (concepts) and their constituent components are defined in concrete and precise terms.
The conceptualization process is all the more important because of the imprecision, vagueness, and ambiguity of many social science constructs.
The process of regarding mental constructs as real is called reification, which is central to defining constructs and identifying measurable variables for measuring them.
One important decision in conceptualizing constructs is specifying whether they are unidimensional and multidimensional.
Unidimensional constructs are those that are expected
to have a single underlying dimension.
Multidimensional constructs consist of two or more underlying dimensions.
Operationalization
Operationalization refers to the process of developing indicators or items for measuring
these constructs.
Indicators operate at the empirical level, in contrast to constructs, which are conceptualized at the theoretical level.
The combination of indicators at the empirical level
representing a given construct is called a variable.
Also each indicator may have several attributes (or levels) and
each attribute represent a value.
Values of attribute may be quantitative (numeric) or qualitative (non-
numeric).
Indicators may be reflective or formative.
reflective indicator is a measure that "reflects" an underlying construct.
A "formative indicator" is a measure "forms" or contributes to an underlying construct.
Levels of Measurement
Levels of measurement, also called rating scales, refer to the values that an indicator can take (but says nothing about the indicator itself).
Nominal scales, also called categorical scales, measure categorical data.
Ordinal scales are those that measure rank-ordered data, such as the ranking of students in a class as first, second, third, and so forth, based on their grade point average or test scores.
Interval scales are those where the values measured are not only rank-ordered, but are also equidistant from adjacent attributes.
Ratio scales are those that have all the qualities of nominal, ordinal, and interval scales, and in addition, also have a "true zero" point
Binary scales are nominal scales consisting of binary items that assume one of two possible values, such as yes or no, true or false, and so on.
Designed by Rensis Likert, this is a very popular rating scale for measuring ordinal data in social science research.
Semantic differential scale. This is a composite (multi-item) scale where respondents
are asked to indicate their opinions or feelings toward a single statement using different pairs of adjectives framed as polar opposites.
1 more item...
Scaling
scaling is a
branch of measurement that involves the construction of measures by associating qualitative judgments about unobservable constructs with quantitative, measurable metric units.
The outcome of a scaling process is a scale, which is an empirical structure for measuring items or indicators of a given construct.
The three most popular unidimensional scaling methods are: Thurstone's equal-appearing scaling, Likert's summative scaling, and Guttman's cumulative scaling
ouis Thurstone. one of the earliest
and most famous scaling theorists, published a method of equal-appearing intervals in 1925.
Thurstone also created two additional methods of building unidimensional scales Ȃ the
method of successive intervals and the method of paired comparisons
The Likert method, a unidimensional scaling method developed by Murphy and Likert (1938), s quite possibly the most popular of the three scaling approaches.
Designed by Guttman (1950), the cumulative
scaling method is based on Emory Bogardus' social distance technique, which assumes that peoples willingness to participate in social relations with other people vary in degrees of intensity.
Indexes
An index is a composite score derived from aggregating measures of multiple constructs
(called components) using a set of rules and formulas.
Typologies
Scales and indexes generate ordinal measures of unidimensional constructs.
researchers sometimes wish to summarize measures of two or more constructs to create a set
of categories or types called a typology.