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Measurement as Structural Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Louis Guttman
Louis Guttman*
Affiliation:
Hebrew University and Israel Institute of Applied Social Research
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Abstract

Definitions are of course arbitrary. Following Lewis Carroll, one can make words mean what one wishes [cf. Gardner, 1960]. Basically, all that is formally required of a definition is that it be clear: that it enable reliable use of the concept concerned. A more informal, heuristic, desideratum is that it actually influence theorists and researchers to progress in their work.

A strategy for attaining reliability is to make a list of related concepts which might be confused with the one intended, and then to define all the concepts simultaneously in one facet framework. Such a mapping helps to make explicit what the target concept has in common with the others, and how it differs from them. This facet strategy has proved to be useful for distinguishing, for example, among varieties of intelligence [Guttman, 1965; Schlesinger and Guttman, 1969], among varieties of attitude [Guttman, 1959; Elizur, 1970; Jordan, 1971], and even between intelligence and attitude [Guttman, in press]. Evidence is accumulating as to the stimulating effect of the approach for the development of new insights and for the discovery of new forms of lawfulness in data.

Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 329 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

*

Presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the Psychometric Society, held jointly with Division 5 of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D. C., Sept. 6, 1971. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of the United States Government, through Grant GS-929 & -2850 to the University of Michigan.

References

References

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References for publications of Louis Guttman

Guttman, Louis et al. An outline of the statistical theory of prediction. In Horst, P. et al (Eds.), The prediction of personal adjustment. New York: Social Science Research Council. 1941, 253–312Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis et al. The quantification of a class of attributes: a theory and method of scale construction. In Horst, P. et al (Eds.), The prediction of personal adjustment. New York: Social Science Research Council. 1941, 319–347Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Intensity and a zero point for attitude analysis (with Edward A. Suchman). American Sociological Review, 1947, 12, 57–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis et al. The principal components of scale analysis. In Stouffer, S. A. et al (Eds.), Measurement and prediction. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1950, 312–361Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Reliability formulas that do not assume experimental independence. Psychometrika, 1953, 18, 225–239CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis A note on Sir Cyril Burt's ‘Factorial analysis of qualitative data’. The British Journal of Psychology Statistical Section, 1953, 6, 1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis The principal components of scalable attitudes. In Lazarsfeld, P. F. (Eds.), Mathematical thinking in the social sciences. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. 1954, 216–257Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis An additive metric from all the principal components of a perfect scale. The British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 1955, 8, 17–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis To what extent can communalities reduce rank?. Psychometrika, 1958, 23, 297–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis What lies ahead for factor analysis?. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 1958, 18, 497–515CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis A structural theory for intergroup beliefs and action. American Sociological Review, 1959, 24, 318–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis Metricizing rank-ordered or unordered data for a linear factor analysis. Sankhya: The Indian Journal of Statistics, 1959, 21, 257–268Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Une histoire personnelle du development de l'analyse scalaire. Revue de Psychologie Appliquee, 1960, 10, 93–100Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis The structure of interrelations among intelligence tests. Proceedings of the 1964 Invitational Conference on Testing Problems. Princeton: Educational Testing Service. 1965, 25–36Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis A faceted definition of intelligence. Studies in Psychology, Scripta Hierosolymitana. Jerusalem: Hebrew University. 1965, 166–181Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis The nonmetric breakthrough for the behavioral sciences. Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Data Processing. Rehovot: Information Processing Association of Israel. 1966, 495–510Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis The development of nonmetric space analysis: a letter to Professor John Ross. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 1967, 2, 71–82CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guttman, Louis A general nonmetric technique for finding the smallest coordinate space for a configuration of points. Psychometrika, 1968, 33, 469–506CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guttman, Louis Smallest space analysis of intelligence and achievement tests (with I. M. Schlesinger). Psychological Bulletin, 1969, 71, 95–100Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Review of Lord and Novick's Statistical theories of mental test scores. Psychometrika, 1969, 34, 398–404Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Integration of test design and analysis. Proceedings of the 1969 Invitational Conference on Testing Problems. Princeton: Educational Testing Service. 1970, 53–65Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Structure and dynamics of worries: A multivariate analysis of worries relating to the public and the individual since the Six Day War and to July 1970, 1970, Jerusalem: The Israel Institute of Applied Social Research and The Communications Institute of the Hebrew University (Hebrew)Google Scholar
Guttman, Louis Social problem indicators. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1971, 393, 40–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louis Guttman A partial-order scalogram classification of projective techniques. (To appear in the Fest-schrift in honor of Joseph Zubin).Google Scholar