Bottleneck models of psychological refractory period (PRP) tasks suggest that a Task 1 response should be unaffected by the Task 2 response in the same trial, because selection of the former finishes before selection of the latter begins. Contrary to this conception, the authors found backward response-level crosstalk effects in which Task 2…

Uncorrectable skew and heteroscedasticity are among the "lemons" of psychological data, yet many important variables naturally exhibit these properties. For scales with a lower and upper bound, a suitable candidate for models is the beta distribution, which is very flexible and models skew quite well. The authors present…

In many cross-cultural research studies, assessment instruments are translated or adapted for use in multiple languages. However, it cannot be assumed that different language versions of an assessment are equivalent across languages. A fundamental issue to be addressed is the comparability or equivalence of the construct measured by each language…

Investigation of the effects of a series of treatment conditions upon some social behaviors may require observation of subjects mutually paired, in round-robin fashion. Data arising from such experiments are difficult to analyze, partly because they do not fit neatly into standard designs. A model is presented. (Author/BJG)

A free-response method of data collection (questionnaires), in conjunction with nonmetric multidimensional scaling, produced results highly similar to those of a previous study, i.e., that an effective college teacher could be characterized in terms of "research,""teaching," and "service to the university." (Author/RC)

This study had two purposes: to test the usefulness of partial order scalogram analysis with multivariate response data; and to illustrate the multidimensional nature of suicide risk. A detailed introduction describes partial order scalograms, which locate respondents' profiles in a two-dimensional space (rather than on a unidimensional Guttman…

Predictive discriminant analysis involves a technique used in multivariate classification, i.e., in predicting membership in well-defined groups for units on which multiple measures are available. The validation (assessment) of group membership predictions pertains to two problems: estimating true proportions of correct classifications (i.e., hit…

Despite revived interest in the study of relationships, the effect of loss of relationships in adulthood has lacked empirical study. To examine the dimensions underlying peoples' conceptions of their attachments in relationships and their reactions to the loss of relationships, 53 college students (31 females, 22 males) completed a questionnaire…

An investigation of memory development using nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Judgments of similarities between complex objects were obtained from 5-year-olds and adults under two conditions: (1) when objects were simultaneously present at the time of comparison, and (2) when the objects were not simultaneously present and had to be compared on…

Three different methods of data collection in which subjects judged proximity between object pairs were examined. One method required subjects to partition objects into homogeneous subsets; the second entailed rating object pairs on a similarity-dissimilarity continuum; and the third involved comparing interobject proximities to a fixed standard.…

The Guttman model of scale analysis has found continued use in sociological analysis despite criticisms placed against it. An empirical example is provided of the use of factor analysis with Guttman scaling even taking into account the criticisms of both very restricted item number of dichotomous responses. Data came from a questionnaire using…

A multidimensional scaling technique was used to assess the content and construct validity of a behavioral rating scale constructed to measure appropriate and inappropriate classroom behavior. The authors argue for the validity of the scale and the use of multidimensional scaling in resolving validity problems in behavior analysis. (Author/JKS)

Tested the California Psychological Inventory Socialization scale's dimensionality on three groups of male and female, criminal or noncriminal subjects. The fit of a one-factor model for all three groups was tested in a simultaneous factor analysis for several populations, and good fit was obtained. (Author)

Correspondence analysis can provide spatial or clustering representations by assigning spatial coordinates minimizing the distance between individuals linked by a sociometric relationship. These scales may then be used to identify individuals' locations in a multidimensional representation of a group's structure or to reorder the rows and columns…

Discusses design, development, and evaluation of scales used in counseling psychology research. Describes methods of scale construction including the Thurstone, Q-sort, rank-order methods, Likert, semantic differential, Guttman, Rasch, and external criterion methods. Presents ways of evaluating newly developed scales. Discusses measurement versus…