Indices and Scales - Introduction to Social Research Methods - Lecture Slides, Slides of Research Methodology

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Indices and Scales

Indices

• Use sets of responses to questions to provide

measures of underlying constructs

• Each question that makes up an index

constitutes an individual indicator for that

construct

• One analogy for an index is a test , and

approaches to index validation work for test-

item validation as well.

Scales

• SCALING creates a measure of a variable

expressed as a numerical score. This measure can be any of the following:

• ordinal (ranked, as with opinion measures),
• interval (ranked with known distances between

rankings, as with “degrees” of liking or disliking something), or

• ratio (interval with known proportions among

scores due to existence of a “true zero,” as with age and income).

Likert Scales

• Likert scales provide ordinal-level measures of attitudes.
• Likert scales always run from one extreme evaluative response to another.
• Likert scales are generally combined to formulate a composite index of some underlying construct. This is why “additive scaling” is typically Likert scaling.
• Likert scales are simple to produce and answer and aid in comprehensive indicator measurement.
• The greatest problem with Likert scales is a form of bias known as response set****.
• Another problem is that equivalent scores don’t necessarily mean equivalent responses.

Bogardus Social Distance Scales

• Bogardus scales measure liking or antipathy between social groups. Groups that dislike one another have greater “social distance” separating them.
• The scale proposes a number of hypothetical situations of social interaction.
• Social distance scales are used to measure overt and symbolic racism and various anti-outgroup sentiments, although their findings are always questionable if not presented comparatively and in context.

Semantic Differential Scales

• These are indirect measure of how a person feels about a concept, object or other person.
• Adjectives express opposite forms of evaluation ( good vs bad), potency (strong vs weak) and activity (active vs passive).
• On response forms, the adjectives are spaced with seven to eleven choices between them, and respondents select one “feeling” per pair.
• Results expose a more complicated set of attitudes than can be acquired asking straightforward questions.

Guttman, or Cumulative, Scales

• Guttman scales describe underlying dimensions in survey data. Guttman scales measure the intensity of a concept.
• Process begins with surveys that ask simple yes-no or present-absent questions about the topic of interest.
• The researcher determines how many people answered the questions in every possible order, and has a hypothesised order based on question “seriousness.”
• If the questions all (or predominately) follow the hypothesised logical order, the question set is considered a “true Guttman scale” and can subsequently be used to measure the intensity of underlying constructs in other studies.