The Psychological well being Inventory (PWBI) is a multidimensional instrument that has enjoyed widespread use in a variety of research initiatives, from small-scale studies to national surveys. Recent empirical investigation of the measure has raised questions about its validity. This study examines the factorial validity of the Environmental…

This study applies multidimensional scaling (MDS) to a knowledge organization problem involving 12 concepts in pulmonary physiology. The concept structures were derived from individual medical and veterinary students before and after focused instruction. One hundred seventy medical students and 85 veterinary medical students completed a…

Data from three subtests (language, mathematics, and social) scales of the Head Start Measures Battery (HSMB) were analyzed using principal components analysis (PCA) and non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS). The HSMB measures preschool development in language, mathematics, nature and science, perception, reading, and social development. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine the various ways in which audience members recall and quantify messages coming through the different media. The data presented here were collected during the course of a panel study into the social context of mass media use. The measurement and analytic techniques are exploratory. The respondents were…

Language is an important part of ethnic identity, but not the only one. Two groups of Afrikaners, 23 members of the National Party and 15 members of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, responded to a questionnaire concerning characteristics essential for Afrikaner group membership. Culture and background were also perceived essential. (Author/LMO)

Researchers evaluated the construct validity of attitude measures containing feeling, belief, and intention-to-act components. Evidence strongly suggests that treating these three factors as unidimensional concepts is inadequate for measuring health attitudes--a multidimensional approach is needed. (PP)

Position adopted in this study was that the underlying structure of what has been thought of as the masculinity-femininity variable is multidimensional, that a more valid description of MF would thus reveal a pattern and not a score. (Authors)

Circulated library books classified according to academic subject areas and student majors were used to determine relative subject similarities in 40 academic departments. Use of multidimensional scaling to compute similarities in undergraduate and graduate circulation and implications for library collection development and storage are described.…

Describes the Teachable Pupil Survey, developed to measure teachers' perceptions of attributes that characterize teachable pupils. Teachers were asked their perceptions of "idealized teachable" pupils and to identify "teachable" attributes from an adjective checklist. The major dimensions found were labeled cognitive-motivational behaviors,…

After evaluation of 125 words was obtained on 51 separate scales, six more general factors emerged: spelling and sound, imagery and meaning, word frequency, recall, emotionality, and goodness. The claim is that multivariate research is a necessary addition to the study of verbal behavior. (PJM)

All pairs of Rorschach inkblots were scaled for perceived similarity by one normal and two psychopathological samples. The resulting data were analyzed using Carroll and Chang's INDSCAL model, which resulted in a good fit in two dimensions. These were interpreted as a dimension of color and one of form ("twoness"). (Author)

Used stick-figure cartoons depicting various peer social situations to investigate meanings given by children in 14 countries to native terms cognate to bullying. Found that 8-year- olds primarily discriminated nonaggressive and aggressive situations; 14-year-olds discriminated fighting versus physical bullying and verbal bullying versus social…

Reviews visualization techniques for scientific disciplines and information retrieval and classification. Highlights include historical background of scientometrics, bibliometrics, and citation analysis; map generation; process flow of visualizing knowledge domains; measures and similarity calculations; vector space model; factor analysis;…

The Computer Anxiety Scale was tested for invariance over the grouping conditions of males/females and graduate/undergraduate status. Subjects included 187 undergraduates and 188 graduates; analyses were conducted on 136 males and 236 females. Results indicate that the construct of computer anxiety appears to be multidimensional with highly…

Examines the students' understanding of mathematical structure and the relationship between problem solving and the identification of the structure in 13 word problems. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to assess how subjects organized word problems in their minds. (YP)