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DSE141 Discovering psychology
Summary handout
Online Activity 4: Constructing scales
This activity used the F-scale veritable by Adorno et al. (1950) in order to illustrate some of the typical
challenges in constructing scales for measuring personality. The activity focused on:
 the problem of acquiescence resolution bias
 the importance of including constructive and invalidating items on a scale
 scoring positive and negative items on a scale.
Scales ar collections of statements (also called items). Respondents are asked to locate themselves on
the scale by, for example, indicating how strongly they agree or disagree with those statements.
Scales are subject to the problem of acquiescence response bias. This refers to a tendency to agree with
statements in scales without paying similarly much attention to the meaning in the statement. Where
acquiescence responses amount this can produce a bias in the concluding scores by exaggerating levels of post
for the statements.
The solution to this problem is to include statements (items) in the scale that run in both positive and
negative directions.
An item is positive when agreeing with it supports the usher in being tested. For example, in the
victor F-scale agreeing with the scale statements indicated support for authoritarianism.




An item is negative (or reverse) when agreeing with it runs against the premise being tested. For
example, on Basss revised random variable of the F-scale agreeing with negative items indicated opposition to
authoritarianism.
So, if a participant is being arranged in their support for authoritarianism they would need to agree with
positive items, and disagree with negative items. In other words, they can no longer just agree with
everything and still appear to support authoritarianism.
Responses need to be translated into scores so that comparisons can be made across large groups of
people.
Each response is allocated a numerical score. For example, the F-scale used a range of...If you want to pop out a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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