Summated Rating Scale Construction: An Introduction (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences)

When a social scientist conducts a survey, the goal is to develop a rating on some attitude, value, or opinion―a summated rating scale. Aimed at helping researchers construct more effective summated rating scales, Spector shows how to determine the amount of items necessary, the appropriate amount of response categories, the most productive wording of items, how to sort good items from bad (including item-remainder coefficients and Cronbach′s alpha), and how to validate a scale, including dimensional validity from factor analysis. This accessible book concludes with a step-by-step account of how to develop a summated rating scale based on classical test theory.

Paul E. Spector is a distinguished professor of industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology and I/O doctoral program director at the University of South Florida. He is also director of the NIOSH funded Sunshine Education and Research Center′s Occupational Health Psychology doctoral program. He is the Associate Editor for Point/Counterpoint for Journal of Organizational Behavior, Associate Editor for Work & Stress, and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Applied Psychology and Human Resources Management Review.

He has research interests in both content and research methodology. His content research concerns occupational health and safety, including injuries, stress and workplace violence. His methodology interests involve the connections among measurement, statistics, and inference. He has published four books with SAGE: Job Satisfaction: Applications, Assessment, Causes and Consequences, Research Designs, SAS 8 Programming for Researchers and Social Scientists, and Summated Rating Scale Construction.