Measurement and Data
An introduction to
the measurement and construction of data. As you may realize, data is
not simply "collected." It is constructed. And data can be constructed
from data, as when we build indices and multi-item scales.
Also in this class will be an introduction to such
concepts as independent variables, dependent variables, control
variables, mediator variables, moderator variables, and so on.
Topics
-
Cases and
variables
-
Dependent and independent
vars
-
Preview of
variables used as controls, mediators, moderators, etc.
-
Scales of measurement
-
Measurement
validity
-
Vectors and
matrices
-
Standardizing data
-
brief mention of
multi-item scaling,
such as thurstone, guttman, likert, magnitude
Handouts
Articles
- Dawes, R.M. 1977. "Suppose we measured height
with rating scales instead of rulers."
Applied Psycho-logical Measurement 1(2):267-273 [^pdf]
|
|
Optional
- Wikipedia. Weight. [html]
- Trochim. Unidimensional scaling [php]
(skim -- will be covered in depth later)
- Sarle. Measurement Theory: Frequently Asked Questions. [html]
Quotations
-
“after a century of theory and research on
psychological test scores, for most test scores we still have no
idea whether they really measure something, or are no more than
relatively arbitrary summations of item responses”
-- Borsboom, 2005
Related Modules
|
Bibliography
Formal measurement theory
-
Stevens, S.S. 1951. Mathematics,
measurement and psychophysics. In
Handbook of Experimental Psychology, ed. S.S. Stevens, New York: Wiley.
- S. S. Stevens (1946), Science 103, 677 [^pdf]
- Luce and Narens. Science. [^pdf]
- Luce. Meaningfulness and invariance. [^pdf]
-
D. H. Krantz, R. D. Luce, P.
Suppes, A. Tversky, 1971. Foundations of Measurement. (Academic Press, New
York, 1971)
-
F. S. Roberts. 1979. Measurement
Theory. (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1979).
-
L. Narens, Abstract Measurement
Theory (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985)
-
Narens. Measurement, Theory of. [pdf]
-
Suppes, P. and Zinnes, J.L. 1963.
Basic measurement theory. In Handbook
of Mathematical Psychology, Vol. 1, ed. R.D. Luce, R.R. Bush and
E. Galanter, New York: Wiley.
- Luce, R. D., Krantz, D. H., Suppes, P., and Tversky, A. (1990),
Foundations of measurement, Vol. III: Representation, axiomatization, and
invariance, New York: Academic Press.
- Suppes, P., Krantz, D. H., Luce, R. D., and Tversky, A. (1989),
Foundations of measurement, Vol. II: Geometrical, threshold, and
probabilistic respresentations, New York: Academic Press.
Statistics and Measurement
- Hand, D.J. (1996), "Statistics and the theory of measurement," with
discussion, J. of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 159, 445-492 [^pdf]
- Zegers, F. E., & ten Berge, J. M. F. (1985). A
family of association coefficients for metric scales.
Psychometrika, 50(1), 17-24 [PDF]
(just skim)
Arguments against measurement level in statistics
- Lord, F.M. (1953), "On the Statistical Treatment of Football
Numbers," American Psychologist, 8, 750-751
- Velleman, P.F., and Wilkinson, L. (1993), "Nominal, Ordinal,
Interval, and Ratio Typologies Are Misleading," The American
Statistician, 47, 65-72.
On data construction
- Bernard, H. R., P. J. Pelto, O. Werner, J. Boster, A. K. Romney,
A. Johnson, C. R. Ember, and A. Kasakoff. 1986. The construction of
primary data in cultural anthropology. Current Anthropology
27:382-395.
Send mail to
sborgatti@uky.edu with
questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2008
by Steve Borgatti. Last modified:
10/08/09.
|
