One way of determining if a construct or dimension, such as anxiety, is unitary is to examine its relationships with other constructs and with the observables which help to define the constructs. If a construct is defined directly in terms of a number of independently measurable observables, one can look for empirical relationships among the observables which should reflect something about the construct. The conclusion that a single dimension is sufficient to account for all of the variables presumed to represent a construct like anxiety requires not only that all of the variables are substantially correlated, but also that the correlations among all of the measures are due to a single common factor to which all of the measures are mutually related. The present study seeks to assess relationships among a number of purported measures of anxiety in order to determine the degree to which these reflect a single dimension.
Method
SubjectsFrom the admissions to a neuropsychiatric hospital, 37 male patients were selected randomly, with the exceptions that those with 1 Portions of this paper were read at the meetings of the Midwestern Psychol. Ass., St. Louis, 19S6.
This study examined the relationships between attitudes inferred from behavior and attitudes implied by item content. 60 subjects judged the similarity between all possible pairs of 18 attitude items and 6 person descriptions designed to reflect three hypothesized dimensions of authoritarian ideology. These interstimulus similarity judgments were subjected t o a multidimensional scaling analysis. Results supported the hypotheses that (a) subsets of attitude statements reflecting hypothesized facets of authoritarian ideology of Superstition, Authoritarian Rejection, and Power and Toughness would be per-ceived as representing independent dimensions; and (b) both people and attitude items can be represented cogently by points in a common multidimensional space.
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