Hi, Thank you so much. So, does it mean that the scale is interval?
On Wednesday, October 1, 2014 9:39 AM, Bruce Weaver [via SPSSX Discussion] <
[hidden email]> wrote:
The scale you are talking about and scoring instructions can be seen here:
http://www.mccc.edu/~jenningh/Courses/documents/Rotter-locusofcontrolhandout.pdfNotice that although there are 29 items, only 23 of them are used in scoring. And the score is a COUNT of selections that are consistent with external locus of control.
Therefore, some people might argue that you should use some type of regression model suitable for counts (e.g., Poisson or negative binomial regression). But in my (somewhat limited) experience with count variables, when the distribution of counts is fairly symmetrical with a mean well above 0, OLS regression may actually work better than Poisson or NB regression. The Poisson distribution does converge on the Normal as the mean increases, and IIRC, with a mean of 10, the normal approximation is already pretty good.
One other thing: You said the developers reported means & SDs. That's a sign that they were treating it as a quantitative scale suitable for analysis with t-tests, ANOVA, linear regression, etc. (Note that the mean is the intercept in an intercept-only OLS regression model.)
HTH.
Basia wrote
>Hi,
>
>This is for my quantitative research proposal (school assignment) in which I propose to do a study on the impact mindfulness training has on stress levels and burnout among externally oriented mental health counselors. Internals tend to cope with stress better than externals.
>I wanted to use the internal-external locus of control to identify counselors who are externally oriented and later to see if they became more internally oriented post intervention. I think that when I look at the scale items, they are ordinal as the distance between answer a or b cannot be known, perhaps only assumed. I think that when I look at the total scores, I can treat the data as interval.
>I need to know the level of measurement for the entire scale, not individual items.
>The researchers who developed the scale provided information on means and standard deviations for samples of several populations.
>
>I appreciate your time and help!
>Basia
>
>
>
>On Wednesday, October 1, 2014 8:23 AM, Art Kendall [via SPSSX Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:
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>look at the norms for the test, how are they expressed?
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>In the articles you used to prepare your study, what kinds of statistical techniques did they use?
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>is the underlying construct continuous?
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>Do you have a reason to expect that the intervals between values are severely discrepant from each other?
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>Are you using the scale as previously developed in a study or are you trying to further develop the scale?
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>Are you concerned about the level of measurement of each item or the level of measurement of the scale score?
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>Art Kendall
>Social Research Consultants
>
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