Page 372 - DEDU504_EDUCATIONAL_MEASUREMENT_AND_EVALUATION_ENGLISH

Educational Measurement and Evaluation

Notes (II) Psychological Techniques
In order to eradicate the shortcomings of the behavioural techniques of measuring attitudes,
the psychologists have developed various other methods. Chief among them are—Thurston’s
Method of Paired Comparison, Thurston and Chave Method of Equal Appearing Intervals,
Likert Method of Summated Rating, Suffir’s Method of Successive Intervals, Guttman’s
Scalogram Method, and Scale Discrimination Technique. An introduction to them is presented
here :
(i) Thurston’s Method of Paired Comparison : In this method, some statements are prepared
about a psychological object. These statements are such prepared as to express qualities
from lowest level to the highest. These statements are in an ordered sequence for all possible
values or positions of a psychological quality. This order may be—extremely like, much like,
less like, indifferent, less dislike, much dislike, extremely dislike. Thus, each statement is
scaled in a psychological order of continuum. After this, these statements are presented to
the person in pairs, and he is asked whether he agrees or not, or likes or not. The number of
total pairs can be known by the following mathematical formula :

( –1
nn )
Number of figures =
2
In which : n = number of total statements
For example, if there are a total of 10 statements in an attitude scale, then the number of
comparative pairs will be :

×
nn ) 10× (10–1 ) 10 9
( –1
= = = 45
2 2 2
In this method, a person has to compare two statements at the same time, and has to give his
decision about both of them.

(ii) Method of Equal Appearing Intervals : There are faced some problems in measuring
attitude by method of paired comparison. The chief difficulty is that the number of
statements is quite large and the possible number of pairs are many, and it is difficult to
make F-matrices, P-matrices and Z-matrices by taking a person’s advice on them. It
consumes time and labour. Besides there is possibility of calculation errors. Considering
these aspects, Thurston and Chave developed a simple method of measuring attitude. In
this method, if the number of statements is large, then it can be used in attitude scale. The
following steps are followed while constructing attitude scale :
(1) At first many attitude statements are prepared and then they are administered.
(2) These administered statements, with the help of specialists, are expressed into 11
grades. These 11 grades are situated on almost equal interval on the psychological
continuum. We can present them as follows :

Unfavourable attitude--- Neutral attitude--- Favourable attitude---

A B C D E F G H I J K
The most unfavourable statements are placed under A while the most favourable
statements are placed under K. All the statements are classified into 11 classifications
on the basis of the specialists’ advice for construction of attitude.
(iii) Method of Summated Rating : In both the methods used by Thurston, the statements
are scaled according to the advice of the specialists; then passing through a long process
the attitude scale is constructed and then the attitude of a person is measure. Lickert,

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