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Dissertation Information for William Ray Koch

NAME:
- William Ray Koch

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Education

SCHOOL:
- University of Missouri (USA) (1980)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: ATTITUDE SCALING USING LATENT TRAIT THEORY

Abstract: "Purpose. The primary objective of the present research was to investigate the applicabilty of the graded response latent trait model to attitude measurement. The motivation behind the research was to determine whether or not the benefits which have been realized through latent trait approaches to ability testing would also result for attitude measurement.

Procedures. Likert type attitude scales were chosen for the study because the scoring of items on such scales corresponds to the rationale behind the graded response model. Namely, the model uses categories of possible responses to items which are arranged in order of magnitude of agreement with the items. The design of the study consisted of systematic comparisons between the results obtained from the latent trait approach and those from the traditional method of Likert scale analysis. The comparisons included both the item parameter and person parameter estimation components of the two scaling approaches, with both real and simulated data used for the analyses. In addition, two separate latent trait procedures were compared with each other. Finally, numerous features of latent trait measurement were studied such as the invariance property of item parameter and trait estimation over subsamples of a population, as well as the amount of information provided by the attitude scales for each level of the attitude trait continuum.

Findings. The results showed the traditional and latent trait approaches to yield highly correlated item parameter estimates and person trait estimates. Both this result and the results of chi-square goodness of fit statistics indicated that the graded response model was appropriate for attitude measurement. Furthermore, the results provided evidence to support the latent trait claim of an invariance property for both item and person parameter estimation. Finally, the information function analyses demonstrated the advantage of the latent trait approach in its ability to provide an indication of the precision of measurement attained by an attitude scale for each level of the attitude trait continuum.

Conclusions. The research demonstrated that latent trait theory could be successfully used to perform attitude measurement for Likert scales. Moreover, the latent trait approach was shown to have several useful features which were not possible with the traditional scaling methods."

MPACT Scores for William Ray Koch

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:25:40

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