Summary
Contents
The goal for any social scientist conducting a survey is to develop a rating on some attitude, value or opinion — a summated rating scale. Aimed at helping researchers construct more effective scales, Spector shows how to determine the number of items necessary, the appropriate amount of response categories and the most productive wording of items. The author discusses how to sort good items from bad (including item-remainder coefficients and Cronbach's alpha) and how to validate a scale, including dimensional validity from factor analysis. User-friendly, the book concludes with a step-by-step account of how to develop a summated rating scale based on classical test theory.
Introduction
Introduction
The summated rating scale is one of the most frequently used tools in the social sciences. Its invention is attributed to Rensis Likert (1932), who described this technique for the assessment of attitudes. These scales are widely used across the social sciences to measure not only attitudes, but opinions, ...