Theory and Methods of Scaling PDF
Preview Theory and Methods of Scaling
c Theory and Methods of Scaling Theory and JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC. New York • London • Sydney Methods of Scaling WARREN S. TORGERSON Staff Member, Lincoln Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Copyright © 1958 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved This book or any part thereof must not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. ISBN 0 471 87945 2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-10812 Printed in the United States of America Foreword Psychophysics was defined by Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887) as “an exact science of the functional relations of dependency between body and mind.” As developed by Fechner, psychophysics included both the measurement of sensory attributes and the quantification of perception, in order to correlate these psychological scales with physical measurements of the stimuli. Louis Leon Thurstone (1887-1955) pointed out that many of these “psychophysical” scaling methods could be used for accurate measurement of psychological attributes of stimuli which had no relevant measurable physical correlate. Thurstone de¬ veloped the law of comparative judgment for data collected by Fechner’s method of paired comparisons and showed that it was possible to obtain internally consistent measurements for various psychological attributes such as, for example, the intensity of feeling toward various “nation¬ alities,” the judgment of the relative merits of compositions, or prefer¬ ences for various foods or gifts. Since Thurstone’s first paper on the law of comparative judgment in 1927, a tremendous amount of work has appeared on the psychological scaling methods. Many linear scaling procedures have been developed; the theory for multidimensional methods has been formulated and applied successfully in various areas; appropriate statistical procedures have been formulated. A Committee on Scaling Theory and Methods, comprised of Harold Gulliksen, chairman, Paul Horst (1950-54), John E. Karlin, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Henry Margenau, Frederick Mosteller, and John Volkmann, was appointed by the Social Science Research Council late in 1950 to Foreword VI review the status of scaling procedures and their relation to basic research in the social sciences. The conclusion was reached that the theoretical and experimental work on psychological scaling methods should be significant in other social science fields since social scientists frequently deal with psychological attributes that have no apparent relevant physical correlates—such as esthetic merit, preference, utility, prestige, friendship, or value. The potential usefulness and wide applicability of these scaling methods is indicated by past studies of sensory problems, such as scaling of preferences for, or other characteristics of, tastes, colors, sounds, or odors. Scaling methods have also been used to study the meaning of words, esthetic merit of pictures, and the appropriateness of various filters for color photography, as well as preferences for various sets of objects such as foods, gifts, and goals of life. Scaling procedures have been found useful in studies of discrimination learning, generaliza¬ tion, and personality. A survey of the literature showed that several hundred pertinent articles were available in journals in a variety of fields such as psy¬ chology, biometrics, agriculture, and optics. The student had no single readily available source for studying the various methods and becoming acquainted with their relative merits. Furthermore, no general survey of scaling methods had appeared since Guilford’s Psychometric Methods (1936),* whereas much important work had appeared, particularly on the law of categorical judgment and on multidimensional scaling. The committee thought that a monograph making these developments readily available to the student would be desirable. Warren S. Torgerson was engaged to review and summarize the material on psychological scaling. He was selected for this assignment because of his intensive work on psychological scaling. His doctoral dissertation presented original theoretical developments in multidimen¬ sional scaling, gave experimental applications of these theoretical formulations, and included a thorough review of the literature in the field. During its early meetings the Committee hoped that a monograph might be issued in 1954. However, from 1952 to 1954 Torgerson was recalled to active service with the Navy; this service and subsequent new obligations made it necessary to abandon the schedule originally set. The Committee assisted and advised in outlining the monograph and compiling the bibliography, as well as offering suggestions during the * Since the project was started, Guilford’s Psychometric Methods (1954) has appeared. It gives an up-to-date account of scaling methods but devotes far less emphasis to derivations and to the method of successive intervals and the multi¬ dimensional methods than the present monograph.
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