CHAPTER 6 INDEXES, SCALES AND TYPOLOGIES

HOMEWORK 3: COMPLETE THE ITEMS BELOW BUT FILL IN THE ANSWERS ON A

PARSCORE SHEET AND RETURN THE COMPLETED PARSCORE TO CLASS BY THE DUE
DATE.

1. Professor Duncan administered a questionnaire containing the following items:

Please tell me how you feel about your supervisor's leadership style on the following three items:

12345
valuable ----:----:----:----:---- worthless
easy ----:----:----:----:---- demanding
critical ----:----:----:----:---- uncritical

Duncan was using a:

a. Semantic differential scale.

b. Thurstone scale.
c. Bogardus social distance scale.
d. Guttman scale.
e. Likert scale.

2. The following items and scoring scheme were taken from the Minnesota Survey of Opinions.
The four items were part of an index designed to assess attitudes toward education. The index
includes response categories:

SA=strongly agree, A=agree, U=undecided, D=disagree, and SD=strongly disagree.

1. A MAN CAN LEARN MORE BY WORKING FOUR YEARS THAN BY GOING

TO SCHOOL.
SA(5) A(4) U(3) D(2) SD(1)

2. THE MORE EDUCATION A MAN HAS, THE BETTER HE IS ABLE TO ENJOY

LIFE.
SA(1) A(2) U(3) D(4) SD(5)

3. EDUCATION HELPS A PERSON TO USE HIS LEISURE TIME TO BETTER

ADVANTAGE.
SA(1) A(2) U(3) D(4) SD(5)

These items presumably form a:

a. Likert scale.
b. Thurstone scale.
c. Guttman scale.
d. Semantic differential scale.
e. Bogardus social distance scale.
3. The following items measure the extent to which Americans are willing to associate with
extraterrestrials.

1. It's OK if my child marries an extraterrestrial.

2. It's OK to have an extraterrestrial for a friend.
3. It's OK to have an extraterrestrial living on the block.
4. It's OK to have an extraterrestrial living in my state.

These items illustrate a:

a. Guttman scale
b. Bogardus social distance scale
c. Thurstone scale
d. Likert scale
e. Semantic differential scale

4. A Thurstone scale was constructed to measure creativity. The scale scores ranged from 1 to
13. If the scale was properly constructed we could conclude that:

a. A person with a score of 6 was three times as creative as a person with a score of 2
b. A person with a score of 6 was more creative than a person with a score of 5
c. A person with a score of 5 was half as creative as someone with a score of 10
d. All of these choices are correct conclusions
e. A person with a score of 6 was three times as creative as a person with a score of 2 and a
person with a score of 5 was half as creative as someone with a score of 10

5. Likert scales are designed to be _____ in measurement.

a. nominal
b. interval
c. ordinal
d. ratio
e. both ordinal and ratio

6. Indexes must be made up of:

a. nominal variables.
b. ordinal variables.
c. interval variables.
d. ratio variables.
e. any type or combination of variables.
7. Among the reasons for the frequent use of composite measures is(are) that:

a. the researcher is seldom able to develop in advance single indicators of complex concepts.
b. a single data item might not have enough categories to provide a range of variation.
c. composite measures give a more comprehensive and accurate indication of a given variable.
d. they are efficient data reduction devices.
e. all of these choices.

8. Which of the following is true about indexes and scales?

a. They are interval measures.
b. Their attributes form an intensity structure.
c. They rank-order the units of analysis in terms of specific variables.
d. They are ordinal measures of variables.
e. They are nominal measures of variables.

9. Thurstone scales use judges in their construction.

a. True
b. False

10. Both scales and indexes are interval measures.

a. True
b. False