Deck 6: Indexes Scales and Typologies

Question 1

Professor Duncan administered a questionnaire containing the following items: Please tell me how you feel about your supervisor's leadership style on the following three items: 1 2 3 4 5
Duncan was using a:

A)Semantic differential scale.
B)Thurstone scale.
C)Bogardus social distance scale.
D)Guttman scale.
E)Likert scale.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Among the reasons for the frequent use of composite measures is(are)that:

A)the researcher is seldom able to develop in advance single indicators of complex concepts.
B)a single data item might not have enough categories to provide a range of variation.
C)composite measures give a more comprehensive and accurate indication of a given variable.
D)they are efficient data reduction devices.
E)all of these choices.

Answer 2

E

Question 3

Which of the following statements is(are)NOT applicable to typologies?

A)They are typically nominal composite measures.
B)They involve a set of categories or types.
C)They may be used effectively as independent or dependent variables.
D)They are often used when researchers wish to summarize the intersection of two or more variables.
E)All of these choices apply to typologies.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

A friend of yours is trying to develop an index to reproduce respondents' patterns of responses.You tell your friend to:

A)construct a Guttman scale.
B)construct a Likert scale.
C)construct a Thurstone scale.
D)construct any one of the above.
E)it cannot be done.

Question 5

According to Babbie,as a general guideline the coefficient of reproducibility for a Guttman scale should be:

A)100 percent
B)90 or 95 percent
C)80 or 85 percent
D)70 percent
E)It doesn't matter

Question 6

A(n)summarizes the intersection of two or more variables.

A)guttman scale
B)likert scale
C)semantic differential scale
D)index
E)typology

Question 7

Which of the following is NOT an important consideration to take into account when building an index?

A)Face validity
B)Balance between general and specific
C)Perfectly correlated components
D)Unidimentionality
E)Variance

Question 8

Which of the following statements is FALSE while determining the relative strengths of the items of bivariate relationships?

A)Be wary of including items in a composite measure that are not related to one another empirically.
B)One should probably drop any item that is not related to several other items in the composite measure.
C)variable very strong relationship between two items presents a problem.
D)One must check the bivariate correlations between all items that one plans to include in the composite measure.
E)You should strive for perfectly correlated (1.0)indicators within a composite measure.

Question 9

Which of the following is true about indexes and scales?

A)They are interval measures.
B)Their attributes form an intensity structure.
C)They rank-order the units of analysis in terms of specific variables.
D)They are ordinal measures of variables.
E)They are nominal measures of variables.

Question 10

Jeremy includes items that measure sexism in his index of gender roles.He does this because he believes the two variables are empirically related.As a methodology student,you should tell Jeremy that:

A)it's a great idea,and he should do it.
B)if he includes both the variables in his index he is violating concerns about the general or specific dimensions of an index.
C)if he includes both the variables in his index he needs to examine the bivariate correlations between them to be sure they are empirically correlated.
D)if he includes both the variables in his index he is violating the criteria specifying the need for unidimensionality in index construction.
E)great idea as long as the bivariate correlations among the variables exceed 0.9

Question 11

Professor Swanson developed an index of marital happiness.Several items in Swanson's questionnaire were not a part of the index (i.e. ,"How many serious quarrels or arguments have you had with your spouse in the past year?")Swanson compared the index scores of marital happiness with these questions.Swanson was doing:

A)index validation.
B)item analysis.
C)external validation.
D)index validation and item analysis.
E)index validation and external validation.

Question 12

Tammy is creating a composite measure to examine life satisfaction and she is trying to decide whether to include the categories of very very dissatisfied and very very satisfied or to simply leave the extreme categories as very dissatisfied and very satisfied.She turns to you for help.Which of the following statements would not help her because it is FALSE?

A)This is a variance issue.
B)Typically as the possible extremes of an index are extended,fewer cases are to be found in each extreme.
C)The range of measurement in an index is an advantage of an index and therefore she should include the most extreme categories to take advantage of the full range.
D)She needs to think about both the range of her index as well as whether there will be an adequate number of cases at each point in the index.
E)All of these statements are CORRECT.

Question 13

Indexes must be made up of:

A)nominal variables.
B)ordinal variables.
C)interval variables.
D)ratio variables.
E)any type or combination of variables.

Question 14

A Thurstone scale was constructed to measure creativity.The scale scores ranged from 1 to 13.If the scale was properly constructed we could conclude that:

A)A person with a score of 6 was three times as creative as a person with a score of 2
B)A person with a score of 6 was more creative than a person with a score of 5
C)A person with a score of 5 was half as creative as someone with a score of 10
D)All of these choices are correct conclusions
E)A person with a score of 6 was three times as creative as a person with a score of 2 and a person with a score of 5 was half as creative as someone with a score of 10

Question 15

Testing the validity of a composite measure by using another,proven indicator is known as?

A)External validation
B)Internal validation
C)Index scoring
D)Thurstone scaling
E)Face validation

Question 16

Professor Thames tried to use a Guttman scale on his data set that he had seen published in a major journal.Thames was upset because the items did not form a Guttman scale on his data.Confused,he asked for your help.You should tell him that:

A)the article that appeared in the journal was probably an error.
B)he should recheck his scaling techniques because he probably made an error.
C)items may form a Guttman scale in one sample but not in another.
D)it was probably not a very good scale.
E)none of these choices.

Question 17

Using Likert-type scale items,Professor Wong developed an index to assess job morale.Wong administered the index to 2,000 workers and found that 1 to 4 responses were missing on each of the items.Wong could:

A)Exclude the cases that contained the missing data from the analysis.
B)Assign the middle value to cases with missing data.
C)Analyze the cases that had missing data to interpret their meaning.
D)Assign values at random.
E)All of these choices.

Question 18

Likert scales are designed to be in measurement.

A)nominal
B)interval
C)ordinal
D)ratio
E)both ordinal and ratio

Question 19

A classification system derived from the observation of specific variables is known as a(n):

A)external validation.
B)Thurstone scale.
C)Likert scale.
D)typology.
E)index.

Question 20

Robert notices that several respondents did not answer the question of whether they took out loans to fund their education.However,later in his survey,Robert finds that respondents told him about the source(s)and the amount(s)of their college loans.In handling the missing data on the question of whether or not they had a college loan,Robert's best approach is to:

A)randomly assign values to the missing data.
B)delete the cases with missing data from the analysis.
C)assign the middle value to the cases with the missing data.
D)use the latter information about amount and source of loans as grounds for assigning values to the cases which had missing values.
E)all of these choices are equally appropriate.

Question 21

Perfectly correlated indicators are not useful in an index.

Question 22

Unless there are compelling reasons for differential weighting,items should be equally weighted.

Question 23

Explain the steps in index construction.

Question 24

Compare and contrast the various types of scales.How do they differ from an index?

Question 25

The only thing one can do when building an index with missing data is drop cases where data is missing.

Question 26

Calculating a correlation will allow you to determine how closely related indicators are.

Question 27

Scales are sample dependent,indexes are not.

Question 28

Typologies can only be constructed on the basis of a single variable.

Question 29

The coefficient of reproducibility refers to the ability of a Guttman scale to reproduce the pattern of individual responses.

Question 30

Thurstone scales use judges in their construction.

Question 31

Typologies are typically nominal composite measures.

Question 32

Both scales and indexes are interval measures.

Question 33

An index is constructed by assigning scores to patterns of responses.

Question 34

A bivariate relationship is between two or more variables.

Question 35

Item analysis allows you to examine the extent to which the composite index is related to other items in the questionnaire that are not part of the index.

Question 36

The purpose of multivariate analysis in index construction is to discover the simultaneous interaction of the items to determine whether they are all appropriate for inclusion in the same index.

Question 37

If two items are perfectly correlated,both should be included in an index.

Question 38

For an index or scale to be considered unidimensional,its component items should be indicators of only one dimension of a concept.