Mental health professionals and the general public have generally held differing attitudes toward mental illness. As part of a needs assessment survey, 102 persons (20 service providers, 20 referral persons, and 62 potential consumers) were interviewed concerning their views of mental health problems and services. Respondents first listed examples…

This paper proposes that a study be done in the area of diffusion of innovations using a recently developed communication methodological tool, metric multidimensional scaling (MDS). An argument is made for using MDS to measure cultural concepts which are shared by members of a society. A definition of homophily-heterophily is presented as the…

A method of factor extraction specific to a binary matrix, illustrated here as a person-by-item response matrix, is presented. The extraction procedure, termed ERGO, differs from the more commonly implemented dimensionalizing techniques, factor analysis and multidimensional scaling, by taking into consideration item difficulty. Utilized in the…

Computer-based multidimensional scaling techniques are used to determine the dimensionality of grammatical variation in three large sets of data: Ross' (1973) Noun Phrase and fake Noun Phrase data; Sankoff's (1974) complementizer "que"-deletion (Montreal French) data; and Cedergren's (1973) syllable-final S-reduction (Panamanian Spanish) data. (DB)

The study reported here applies an empirical approach to the analysis of the components of whites' racial attitudes. It was designed to see whether items addressing two approaches to achieving racial equality--changing the community versus improving the black--would cluster separately or whether they would cluster with items of similar type…

Compared equity integration and an input integration model in explaining equity judgments in personnel evaluation utilizing multidimensional input. Undergraduates apportioned merit raises between two hypothetical employees described by five sets of adjectives representing five input dimensions. Dissimilar dimensions followed the rules of input…

This special issues describes multidimensional scaling (MDS), with emphasis on proximity and preference models. An introduction and six papers review statistical developments in MDS study design and scrutinize MDS research in four areas of application (consumer, social, cognitive, and vocational psychology). (SLD)

Discusses the issue of centralization or decentralization of academic library collections, and describes a statistical analysis of book circulation at the University of Southwestern Louisiana that yielded subject area clusters as a compromise solution to the problem. Applications of the cluster model for all types of library catalogs are…

Studies the dimensions of meaning attributed to facial expressions of emotion in preschoolers and adults. Subjects indicated the similarity or dissimilarity among different emotions by placing photographs of emotional facial expressions into preordained groups. For each age group, multidimensional scaling yielded a two-dimensional structure…

Two techniques compose a new methodology for studying certain classes of qualitative information: the F-sort task for data collection and latent partition analysis for data summarization. A detailed presentation is given of its application to a study of teacher's views of facilitating student learning in the classroom. (Author/LMO)

Utilizing social judgment theory, a method for eliciting opinions about the relative importance of multiple objectives, a model was developed to evaluate the performance of public agencies and programs. The model was then applied to the problem of establishing relative weights for six performance dimensions for a public agency. (Author/EGS)

Proposes a quadratic programming, least squares solution to Carroll's weighted unfolding model with nonnegativity constraints imposed on weights. It can be used to test various hypotheses about the weighted unfolding model with or without constraints. (RC)

Discusses the different strategies employed by three practical nonmetric multidimensional scaling algorithms using Monte Carlo techniques. (Author/RK)

Study deals with a comparative developmental analysis of performances on the same task by four age groups. (MB)

The problem in the present study was to produce a description of the logico-semantic relations which define the semantic spaces of children and to indicate how these spaces change over time. (Authors)