A general formulation of multidimensional unfolding models involving the latitude of acceptance

Abstract

The latitude of acceptance (Sherif & Hovland, 1961; Coombs, 1964) is considered as the cornerstone of social judgement theory and attitude measurement (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Luo (1998a) introduced a general form of the unidimensional unfolding models in which the latitude of acceptance is explicitly parameterised. This paper generalises this form further into a multidimensional model. It is shown that the structure of multidimensional unfolding models is defined by the operation function and the magnitude of the latitude of acceptance. It is also demonstrated that some well referenced multidimensional scaling models are special cases of the general form introduced in this paper. According to this general form, some new multidimensional unfolding models can be readily specified. This general form provides a systematic understanding of the multidimensional unfolding models, and for applications, it reveals the possibility of developing a general algorithm for the estimation of the parameters of multidimensional unfolding models.