Acquiescence in Components Analysis and Multidimensional Scaling of Self-Rating Items

Abstract

Earlier work has shown that when multidimensional scaling (MDS) is applied to item intercorrelations, met ric MDS implicitly subtracts the standardized person mean (SPM) from responses. As a result, when a met ric or nonmetric MDS solution is compared to a com ponents solution, the components solution often con tains one component with no counterpart among the scaling dimensions. If self-report items form a bal anced scale and negatively worded items are not re verse scored, the SPM is closely related to several con cepts of acquiescence and disacquiescence. In this paper, MDS and components solutions are compared using two balanced self-report item sets. In the Likert self-report attitude item set, the MDS and components solutions were essentially the same. In a set of affec tive well-being items, the components solution con tained a general component with no counterpart among the scaling dimensions. Scores along the general com ponent were substantially correlated with measures of acquiescence and disacquiescence. Results in the sec ond dataset suggest that when the self-report items are balanced and the negatively worded items have not been reverse scored, MDS and components solutions can differ largely with respect to a component closely associated with certain measures of acquiescence. In dex terms: acquiescence, attitude measurement, factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, personality mea surement, response bias, self-report items.