Method Of Equal-appearing Intervals Research Articles

A Scale to Measure the Attitude of Organic Farmers towards Paramparagrat Krishi Vikas Yojana

Organic farming is considers as the medium and long term effect of agricultural interventions on the agro ecosystem. A scale has been developed for the study of attitude of organic famers towards PKVY. Attitude is a behavioural construct that cannot be measured by a single variable, hence there arise a need for developing a standardized instrument for its measurement. A method of Equal-Appearing Intervals was used to construct the attitude scale. A total of 60 attitude statements about PKVY scheme expressing varied degree of favourableness were collected and modified based on the Edward’s criteria. These statements were subjected to judge’s opinion by agricultural extension scientists of State Agricultural Universities and ICAR Research Institutes and field level extension workers. Based on expert’s response a standardized scale has been developed with 10 statements which are having universe of content, uniform distribution of scale values along the psychological continuum and high scale “S” values and lower Interquartile range “Q” values and more or less equal number of favourable and unfavourable attitude items. The selected statements were tested with validity and reliability.

The Visual Perception of Large-Scale Distances Outdoors.

The ability of 32 younger (ages ranged from 19 to 32 years) and older adults (ages ranged from 65 to 83 years) to visually perceive outdoor distances was evaluated; we used the method of equal-appearing intervals. On any given trial, the observers adjusted five distance intervals in depth so that they all appeared equivalent in magnitude (and equal to a standard initial egocentric distance of 6 m). The judgments of approximately two thirds of the younger and older observers exhibited varying degrees of perceptual compression, while those of the remaining one third were essentially accurate. Unlike a number of previous studies that evaluated the perception of shorter distances, no significant effects of age were obtained in the current experiment. In particular, there were no significant effects of age upon either accuracy or precision. The ability of human observers to evaluate large-scale distances outdoors is well maintained with increasing age.

How Good Is Good? Students and Assessors’ Perceptions of Qualitative Markers of Performance

Background: Qualitative markers of performance are routinely used for medical student assessment, though the extent to which such markers can be readily translated to actionable pieces of information remains uncertain. Purpose: To explore (a) the perceived value to be indicated by descriptor phrasescommonly used for describing student performance, (b) the perceived weightof the different performance domains (e.g. communication skills, work ethic, knowledge base, etc), and (c) whether or notthe perceived value of the descriptors changes as a function of theperformance domains. Methods: Five domains of performance were identified from the thematic coding of past medical student transcripts (N = 156). From the transcripts, 91 distinct descriptors indicating the language commonly used by assessors were also identified. From the list of 91 descriptors, Thurstone's method of equal-appearing intervals was used to extract 10 descriptors that were representative of the continuum of student performance. A modified paired comparisons method was then used to enable the relative ranking of each of 10 descriptors combined with each of 5 different domains of performance. A web-based survey was used to collect responses from participants (N = 209), which consisted of medical students and faculty members who were previously involved in student assessment. Results: Results demonstrated that respondents did not simply sum positive and negative descriptors in a uniform manner. Rather, comments on some domains (e.g., “ability to apply patient centred medicine”) were seen as particularly positive when associated with positive descriptors but not particularly negative when associated with negative descriptors. For others (e.g., “receptivity and responsiveness to feedback”) the reverse was true. Comments on “knowledge-base” elicited a relatively muted perception at both ends of the scale. Finally, the results also revealed moderate misalignment in the perceptions of assessors and students. Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that the use of any given descriptor conveys slightly different meaning dependent on the context in which it is used. This helps to address some key issues surrounding the application of qualitative markers to performance assessment in medical education.

Creating a performance appraisal template for pharmacy technicians using the method of equal-appearing intervals.

To design a highly quantitative template for the evaluation of community pharmacy technicians' job performance that enables managers to provide sufficient feedback and fairly allocate organizational rewards. Two rounds of interviews with two convenience samples of community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians were conducted. The interview in phase 1 was qualitative, and responses were used to design the second interview protocol. During the phase 2 interviews, a new group of respondents ranked technicians' job responsibilities, identified through the initial interviewees' responses, using scales the researchers had designed using an interval-level scaling technique called equal-appearing intervals. Chain and independent pharmacies. Phase 1-20 pharmacists and 20 technicians from chain and independent pharmacies; phase 2-20 pharmacists and 9 technicians from chain and independent pharmacies. Ratings of the importance of technician practice functions and corresponding responsibilities. Weights were calculated for each practice function. A weighted list of practice functions was developed, and this may serve as a performance evaluation template. Customer service-related activities were judged by pharmacists and technicians alike to be the most important technician functions. Many pharmacies either lack formal performance appraisal systems or fail to implement them properly. Technicians may desire more consistent feedback from pharmacists and value information that may lead to organizational rewards. Using a weighted, behaviorally anchored performance appraisal system may help pharmacists and pharmacy managers meet these demands.

Development and Testing of the Attitudes Toward Feminism and the Women's Movement (FWM) Scale

This article outlines the development and testing of the Attitudes Toward Feminism and the Women's Movement (FWM) Scale, a brief measure of affective attitudes toward the feminist movement. Thurstone's (1959) method of equal-appearing intervals was used initially to create the final 10-item summated rating (Likert) scale. Establishment of internal consistency reliability and construct (convergent and discriminant) validity was determined on a sample of 117 female and male college students. Results suggested a highly internally consistent and valid attitudinal measure. Additional evidence for the validity of the FWM is discussed in terms of research in which it has been successfully used.

Simplified Successive Intervals Scaling

A simplified version of successive intervals scaling is described. Scale values for various datasets obtained with simplified successive intervals scaling are approximately linearly related to those obtained with traditional successive intervals scaling and with the method of pair comparisons. Simplified successive intervals scaling can be used with any number of stimuli and is as easy to apply as the method of equal-appearing intervals. However, simplified successive intervals scaling does not assume, as does the method of equal-appearing intervals, that rating categories or intervals are of equal width.

Scale for the Measurement of Attitude Toward Chicanos: A Research Note

This article describes the construction of a scale for the measurement of attitude toward Chicanos using the method of equal-appearing intervals as outlined by Thurstone and Chave. The description includes the methods and procedures used for the collection of statements. The procedures used to calculate the median, that is, the scale value (S value) and the interquartile range (Q value) for each of the items are delineated. Both the S values and the Q values constitute the criteria for the final selection of the items for two forms of the scale. The results are set forth together with the methods for scoring the scale. Finally, the result of equivalent-forms method used to estimate the reliability of the scale is reported.

Scales for the measurement of attitudes toward blood donation.

Attitudes toward blood donation are frequently assumed to vary along a single dimension from unfavorable to favorable. In contrast, theories of attitude structure specify three distinct attitude components: affect, cognition, and behavior. This article describes the development of three new scales for the measurement of affective, cognitive, and behavioral components of attitudes toward blood donation. The scales were developed using the method of equal-appearing intervals and were administered to both donors of blood and nondonors. Correlations among the scales were relatively small and supported the three-component distinction. Affect was more strongly correlated with the number of prior donations than was cognition, which suggested an important role for emotional factors in blood donation. Scores on all three scales showed the attitudes of blood donors to be more favorable than those of nondonors.

Scales for Measuring Fear of AIDS and Homophobia

Two scales, one for measuring attitudes toward the fear of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and one for measuring attitude toward homosexuality, were constructed using Thurstone's method of equal-appearing intervals. After construction, the scales were given to 528 students at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1985 to determine their respective reliabilities. Factor analyses were also done to determine what factors underlie the attitudes measured by the two scales and to determine if fear of AIDS and homophobia are in fact simply two facets of the same attitude: fear of homosexuals. The results indicated high reliabilities of both scales and a relatively low correlation between the two scales suggesting that the scales do measure different attitudes.

Empirical Approach to Testing Equal-Interval Assumption of Equal-Appearing-Interval Scales

The method of equal-appearing intervals offers no direct check of the assumption that the intervals between points on equal-appearing-interval scales are, in fact, equal appearing. An approach is described for checking this assumption that has much in common with Stevens' method of direct magnitude-estimation.

Oral stereognosis in predicting speech performance: preliminary report.

From 50 third grade public school students given an oral form-identification test 11 were chosen as their scores constituted a range of inferior performance. Scores on oral form-discrimination test and samples of connected, spontaneous speech were recorded and scaled by the method of equal-appearing intervals. Performance on the oral form-discrimination task was not significantly related to speech performance. It was concluded that, while some parameters of speech performance, such as articulatory deviations in persons identified as having such, may be associated with poorer oral stereognostic skills, the opposite may not necessarily hold true. Poorer oral stereognostic skills may not be indicative of poor speech performance. As performance on the oral form-identification task was statistically related to that on the oral form-discrimination task these tests measure similar oral stereognostic skills.

Toward an Operational Definition of Health

The social construct of health is composed of two dimensions, function level and prognosis. Differences among levels of function are primarily value judgments about conformity to social norms of well-being and role performance. Twenty-nine operationally-defined levels span a universe of possible case descriptions of function status. Sixty-two nurses and graduate students, using the method of equal-appearing intervals, assigned values to randomly parallel samples of the descriptions on a continuum from 0 representing death to I representing maximum wellbeing. Despite truncation at the scale extremes, differences were demonstrated among the function levels and between the nurses and students.

Correspondence between Mean and Median Scale Values for Sets of Stimuli Scaled by the Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals

Mean scale values were computed for each of five sets of stimuli for which median scale values and the distributions of judges' ratings had been reported. The correlations (Pearson rs) between the mean and the median scale values for each of the five sets of stimuli range from .995 to .999. These high correlations indicate that mean and median scale values rank order sets of stimuli in approximately the same manner. Several implications of this finding are discussed.

Equal-appearing interval scale values and successive interval scale values derived from the same set of ratings.

Both equal-appearing interval scale values and successive interval scale values were computed for each of five sets of ratings on five different kinds of stimuli. The scale values obtained by these two methods rank ordered almost identically the stimuli which were scaled. For all five sets of ratings, the Pearson r for estimating the relationship between the two sets of scale values was equal to or greater than .99. In view of the close relationship between the scale values derived by the two methods, practical considerations would make the method of equal-appearing intervals the preferable one for many purposes.

Scaling of Attitudes by the Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals: A Review

Scaling of Attitudes by the Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals: A Review

Studies of scale and ambiguity values obtained by the method of equal-appearing intervals.

Studies of scale and ambiguity values obtained by the method of equal-appearing intervals.

Irregularities in judgment data collected by the method of equal-appearing intervals.

Irregularities in judgment data collected by the method of equal-appearing intervals.

An Evaluation of the Bogardus Scale of Social Distance by the Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals

An Evaluation of the Bogardus Scale of Social Distance by the Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals

Scale analysis and the measurement of social attitudes

This paper discusses and compares the methods of attitude scale construction of Thurstone (method of equal-appearing intervals), Likert (method of summated ratings), and Guttman (method of scale analysis), with special emphasis on the latter as one of the most recent and significant contributions to the field. Despite a certain lack of methodological precision, scale analysis provides a means of evaluating the uni-dimensionality of a set of items. If the criteria for uni-dimensionality are met, the interpretation of rank-order scores is made unambiguous, and efficiency of prediction from the set of items is maximized. The Guttman technique, however, provides no satisfactory means of selecting the original set of items for scale analysis. Preliminary studies indicated that both the Likert and the Thurstone methods tend to select scalable sets of items and that their functions in this respect are complementary. A method of combining the Likert and Thurstone methods in order to yield a highly scalable set of items is outlined. Sets of 14 items selected by the method have, in the two cases where the technique has been tried, yielded very satisfactory scalability.

Studies in measurement of the relations among sovereign states

This article describes the application of three psychometric methods to the problem of measurement of the friendly or hostile relations among states of the world today. To secure judgments, schedules were sent to students of international affairs at several times during the last five years. The method of equal-appearing intervals was used to determine the relative probability of war for 88 pairs of states in January, 1937; the method of “triadic combinations” to determine relative friendliness among the Great Powers in November, 1938; and the method of “multidimensional” or group rank order to measure the attitudes of important states toward the Great Powers in March and April, 1939; June, 1940; and June, 1941. A chart of scale values for the pairs of Great Powers shows the changing trends since 1937. The last two methods were used to depict the Great Powers in multidimensional space according to their mutual friendliness, thus permitting the application of a type of factor analysis. The reliability of the methods employed was high, and various types of evidence support the general validity of the results.