THE MEASUREMENT OF CONCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS,
Abstract
The purpose is to examine the value of the technique of multidimensional scaling - MDS - for the objective measurement of dimensionality and combinatory processes involved in attitudes. The MDS model assumes that in making judgments, people may combine one, two, or more attributes of objects. In ordinary psychological scaling, persons are asked to judge objects on one attribute at a time. In the MDS method, the bases or attributes to be used by the subject in making judgments are not given. The object of the technique is to discover the attributes involved. Individuals were given a range of stimuli in a particular stimulus domain (e.g., eleven nations). All pairs of stimuli were listed (e.g., Britain France) and the subject was asked to rate their similarity on a scale extending from 1 (very similar) to 9 (very dissimilar). This produces a matrix of N(N-1)/2 judgments for any number of stimuli. The purpose of the analysis is to uncover the number and characteristics of the attributes (dimensions) employed by subjects in making these global judgments about complex objects which may vary simultaneously along several dimensions. It is shown that if all the mutual interpoint distances (similarity-dissimilarity judgments) among a set of points are known, a Euclidean space may be derived. The order to the dimensionality of the space, as well as the projection of the points on these orthogonal dimensions, can be found.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1965
- Accession Number
- AD0615102
Entities
People
- H. M. Schroder
- S. Blackman
Organizations
- Princeton University