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A Scaling Model with Response Errors and Intrinsically Unscalable Respondents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

C. Mitchell Dayton*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
George B. Macready
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to C. Mitchell Dayton, Department of Measurement and Statistics, College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Abstract

Goodman contributed to the theory of scaling by including a category of intrinsically unscalable respondents in addition to the usual scale-type respondents. However, his formulation permits only error-free responses by respondents from the scale types. This paper presents new scaling models which have the properties that: (1) respondents in the scale types are subject to response errors; (2) a test of significance can be constructed to assist in deciding on the necessity for including an intrinsically unscalable class in the model; and (3) when an intrinsically unscalable class is not needed to explain the data, the model reduces to a probabilistic, rather than to a deterministic, form. Three data sets are analyzed with the new models and are used to illustrate stages of hypothesis testing.

Type
Original Paper
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 The Psychometric Society

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References

Reference Notes

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