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Syllabus
Schedule
Professor
Software
Data
FYA

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.

 

 

 

Topics

  • Scales of measurement

  • Measurement validity

  • Standardizing data

  • Indices versus scales

  • 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]
  • Chatterjee & Hambrick. 2007. It's All about Me: Narcissistic Chief Executive Officers and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance. Administrative Science Quarterly; Sep2007, Vol. 52 Issue 3, p351-386 [^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

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Send mail to sborgatti@uky.edu with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2008 by Steve Borgatti. Last modified: 12/07/10.

 

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