Thurstone Scaling

From the perspective of a person whose attitudes, behaviors, or knowledge are being assessed with a survey of some sort, an attitude scale might seem little more than a series of questions or statements (stimuli) to be answered. For a researcher, however, the instrument used to gather these data is the end product of a process involving considerable reflection on a psychological construct of interest and culminates in a grouping of items that provide material information about people's beliefs and opinions. The process of psychological scaling itself is the measurement and quantification of attitudes, attributes, or traits, and many approaches to this process are available to researchers that vary with respect to both theoretical underpinnings and how they are applied in practice. Among [Page 1513]these ...