Scale Development: Theory and Applications (Applied Social Research Methods)

Measurement -- the way researchers quantify the observations they have made about people, objects, events, or even processes -- is a fundamental activity of science. One of the main frustrations researchers have experienced in measurement is the lack of an appropriate instrument for their particular research study. As a result of this deficiency, the researcher must develop his or her own scale of measurement. This book will enable the researcher to develop reliable and valid instruments for measurement.

Written at an accessible level, Scale Development guides the reader toward the identification of the latent variable, the generation of an item pool, the format for measurement, and the optimization of the scale length. Using exercises to illustrate the concepts, the text also includes advice about factor analytic strategies. For researchers tired of "off-the-shelf" measurement tools that don′t fit their particular situation, this is a must read.

Robert F. DeVellis is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Health Behavior (Gillings School of Global Public Health) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. DeVellis has more than 40 years of experience in the measurement of psychological and social variables. He served as the first domain chair for Social Outcomes of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) consortium, a multisite National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap initiative directed at identifying, modifying, testing, and disseminating outcome measures for use by NIH investigators. He has served on the Board of Directors for the American Psychological Association’s Division of Health Psychology (38), on the Arthritis Foundation’s Clinical/Outcomes/Therapeutics Research Study Section, and on the Advisory Board of the Veterans Affairs Measurement Excellence Initiative. He is the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals and is an associate editor of Arthritis Care and Research. In addition, he has served as guest editor, guest associate editor, or reviewer for more than two dozen other journals. He has served as principal investigator or co-investigator since the early 1980s on a series of research projects funded by the federal government and private foundations.