Factor Measures: Their Construction, Scoring, Psychometric Validity, and Consistency

Abstract

Once having reached unique resolution of factors in a domain and—by matching and interpretation—established them as replicated and meaningful concepts, the psychologist can enter many useful directions of pure and applied research. Indeed, it is here that multivariate and bivariate experimentalists can most profitably come together, for the latter can now avail themselves, in their ANOVA designs, of meaningful factor scores, as independent and dependent variables. To take these steps the next requirement is to set up measuring batteries and scales appropriately scored and of definable reliability and validity. To serve that need we turn in this chapter to the principles of scoring, to the salient issues of battery construction in the light of those principles, and to the evaluation and maximizing of psychometric properties of factor scales, as reflected in validity and consistency coefficients.