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Dissertations
1971
A theory-based scale for measurement of afective
responses to personality and atitude inventories
An-Yen Liu
Iowa State University
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Liu, An-Yen, "A theory-based scale for measurement of afective responses to personality and atitude inventories " (1971).
Retrospective Teses and Dissertations. 4557.
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I
I
72-12,568
LIU, An-Yen, 1941-
A THEORY-BASED SCALE fOR MEASUREMENT OF AFFECTIVE
RESPONSES TO PERSONALITY AND ATTITUDE INVENTORIES.
Iowa State University, Ph.D., 1971
Psychology, experimental
University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
A theory-based scale for measurement of affective responses
to personality and attitude inventories
by
An-Yen Liu
A Dissertation Submitted to the
Graduate: Faculty ir. Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Major Subject: Psychology
Approved:
Signature was redacted for privacy.
Ir: Char^^of Major Work
Signature was redacted for privacy.
For the Major Department
Signature was redacted for privacy.
For the Graduate College
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa
1971
PLEASE NOTE:
Some pages have indistinct
print. Filmed as received.
UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION 1
REVIEW OF LITERATURE 5
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCALE 15
The Normative Model 15
The Conceptual Framework 23
The General Procedure 27
The Hypotheses 29
METHOD 31
Subjects 31
Measurement Scales 32
Procedure 34
RESULTS 40
DISCUSSION 63
SUMMARY 72
LITERATURE CITED 74
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 80
APPENDIX A: CPI FACTORS SCALES 81
APPENDIX B: PERSONAL TRAITS RATING SCALE 90
APPENDIX C: MANAGEMENT STYLE QUESTIONNAIRE 91
APPENDIX D 96
APPENDIX E 97
1
INTF.ODOCT ION
Low internal consistency, considerable instability over
time, very limited predictive value, and limited degree of
convergent validity are the typical deficiencies of personal-
ity scales. Evidence of these deficiencies is the large
amount of remainder variance, the variance which is not asso-
ciated with either people or item characteristics. The
largest proportion of this variance is attriôntable to person-
item interaction, the so called idiosyncratic response pat-
terns (Fiske, 1963, 1966, 1968; Turner & Fiske, 1968). Due
to the functioning of this source of variance, the
equivalency and comparability of different persons with the
same score are doubtful. A fairly recent summary of validity
studies (Guion and Cottier, 1965) indicates little validity
in personality measurements. This situation occurs to a
lesser degree in achievement tests, but even here the consid-
eration of response patterns has led to somewhat better meas-
urement (true score estimation).
For more than two decades, investigators (e.g. Cronbach,
1946, 1950; Edwards, 1957; Edwards and Walsh, 1964a, 1964b;
Jackson, 1967; Messick, 1967) have indicated that variance
from response sets, variables identified as social desirabil-
ity and acquiescence, intrudes as a source of systematic
error into the score obtained from personality inventories.
2
The responses of a person to a personality measure seem to
involve response sets as well as responses to the content of
the items. Recently, Edwards and Walsh (1964b) also pointed
out that a high proportion of variance in personality
inventories is attributable to individual difference in the
tendency to use the center portion of a scale rather than
using the extremes. Specifically, when subjects are offered
three alternatives in responding to a question: "true", "?",
and "false", they found that the tendency to use a "?" re-
sponse is a reliable characteristic of an individual and is
independent of personality as measured by the usual scoring
procedures. Within the connotations of acquiescence, the ex-
planation has been offered that a tendency to respond "true"
to a positive statement or "false" to a negative statement
contributes to error variance in personality tests. Other
evidence indicates that acquiescence occurs more readily when
items are weak in content (Trott and Jackson, 1967), or when
subjects are uncertain (Peabody, 1964).
Generally, there are two approaches to control response
sets: (1) reduction cf the extent to which they are permitted
to operate by controlling test items and response format and
(2) assessment of the degree of their operation after they
have occurred and then adjusting for them. Techniques of
control and assessment of response sets involve partialing
out response sets statistically, using balanced scoring keys.
3
using forced-choice response format, and differentially
scoring for separate set and content components (Edwards,
1957; Helmstadter, 1957; Messick, 1961; Webster, 1958).
Despite more than a decade of intensive investigation in
this area, neither the explanation nor the control of this
phenomenon is considered satisfactory. In review articles
(Sorer, 1965; Block, 1965) evidence is cited and questions
raised concerning the explanations offered by the
aforementioned investigations. For example, Scott (1963)
strongly argues and supports with data that there are wide
differences among individual's conception of the desirable.
Figgins (1966) supporting Scott's position, found at least
six viewpoints in social desirability judgments of MMPI
items. She concluded that forced-choice format is inadequate
as a control for social desirability at the individual level.
Item reversal, the p-opular technique used for the control of
acquiescence, has been severely criticized on methodological
grounds by Liberty (1965).
This study proposes a normative model which takes ac-
count of the individual response sets in scaling affective
responses. Both theoretical assumptions and psychometric
properties of this model will be explored. The purpose of
this study is to reduce the error variance, mainly the person-
item interaction, in attitude and personality measurement.
The implication of a positive result of this research is a
a
procedure for obtaining and analyzing affective responses to
statements contained in inventories such that the scale has
meaning independent of content. Also the measure of a trait
or attitude may be relatively free of certain kinds of re-
sponse biases.
The first part of this thesis presents the normative
model and its derivation. The rationale and conceptual
framework behind the model will then be discussed, â general
procedure for obtaining responses and data processing
follows. The second part explores the psychometric proper-
ties in context of the model. Data will be analyzed and used
to study the psychometric properties of the proposed model.
5
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
As mentioned in the introduction section, response sets
form a particular class of variables which have long been of
concern to the psychometrician. Conventional studies and
methods of control have been intensively reviewed by Edwards
(1957) and recently in Berg's book (1967). More recent de-
velopments in this area can be found in Fiske and Pearson's
paper (1970). Here we shall review only the previous re-
search which has direct implications for the development of
the proposed normative model, and some of the more recent re-
search.
Dissatisfied with Fechner's law and the fact that the
intervals derived by Thurstonian indirect scaling methods are
not equal, Stevens (1946, 1957, 1958), based on the
psychophysical scaling results from his so-called "direct
methods", asserted that subjects make judgments on category
scales on the basis of how certain they are that there is a
difference between a standard stimulus and another stimulus
on the same continuum. In other words, subjects make proba-
bility judgments as to differences between stimuli. Support
for this hypothesis came from the results of an investigation
by Stevens and Galanter (1957). They studied the relation-
ship between scaling results from direct psychophysical
methods and the conventional scaling procedures such as equal
