Building a Scale

So my first big light bulb moment occurred this past weekend in CECS 6510.  Dr. K has been telling us that we are learning to build a scale and then learning how to measure something with it.  Well I guess I am just really hardheaded because I just got it!

We are essentially looking for connections in our survey questions and answers that build constructs.  We are doing this by using SPSS to analysis our data.

We follow a set of processes that brings our data from random questions to a set of questions that builds a strong construct leading to our development of a scale.  This process can be long and arduous, but filled with reward.  I will now attempt to summarize the process we are using in these classes.

This process is Cybernetic in nature (meaning it never ends and is a constant loop of knowledge acquisition). Here are the Cybernetic steps I am currently working with to build my first scale:

1. Descriptive Statistics (determines if all items contain real numbers)
2. Reliability Analysis (check Cronbach’s α)
3. Factor Analysis (look for constructs)
   1. After looping 2 and 3 for a while I run with the best construct and run some other analysis.
4. ALSCAL and Hierarchical clustering (looking for more groupings or better groupings)

After repeating these steps 1,000 times I found one very strong construct with a Conrbach’s α of .92.  I turned this construct into a single domain or box  to compare with my demographic info.  This new domain is my scale. YEA!!!  I am just about to finish my second scale based off of my second construct, wish me luck . . .