13

Measurement and
Scaling Concepts

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May

not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a
publicly accessible
website,
in whole
or in part.
2013
Cengage
Learning.
All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

Money Matters?
Evaluation on customer
relationship management
(CRM) employees.
An overall ranking of all
CRM employees.
Key question is, What is
performance?
Sales? Profits?
Directors evaluation?
Customer satisfaction?

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

13-2

What Do I Measure?
Measurement
The process of describing some property of a
phenomenon, usually by assigning numbers in
a reliable and valid way.
The numbers should convey information about
the property being measured.

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

133

Course grade
Letter grade

A: excellent
B: good
C: average
D: poor
F: failing

Percentage grade
100 percent: perfect
60-99: differing degrees of passing performance

P/F grade
P: passing mark
F: failing mark

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

134

EXHIBIT 13.1

Are There Any Validity Issues with This

Measurement?

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

135

Levels of Scale Measurement

Nominal (categorical)
Assigns a value to an object for identification or
classification purposes.
Most elementary level of measurement.
Sweeteners: cane sugar, corn syrup, fruit
extract

Ordinal (categorical)
allow things to be ranked based on certain
properties.
Have nominal properties.
2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

136

Levels of Scale Measurement (contd)

Interval
Capture information about differences in quantities of a
concept.
Have both nominal and ordinal properties.
Temperature:
June 680F (26.7C)
December 740F (4.4 C)
Attitude

Ratio
Highest form of measurement.
Have all the properties of interval scales
Represents absolute quantities: zeroabsent of some
property.
2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

137

Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of

Scales
Discrete Measures
Measures that can take on only one of a
finite number of values.
Nominal and ordinal scales

Continuous Measures
Measures that can take on any value along
some scale range.
Infinite number of values
Interval and ratio sales
2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

138

Index Measures
Index Measures
Multi-item instruments for measuring a
concept.
Indexes often are formed by putting several
variables together.
Different variables may have different weight.

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

139

American Consumer Satisfaction

Index

a weighted average of three survey questions that

measure different facets of satisfaction with a product or
service.
Perceived quality
Customer expectations
Perceived value

http://www.theacsi.org/the-american-customersatisfaction-index
2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

1310

Three Criteria for Good Measurement

Reliability

Validity

Good
Measurement

Sensitivity

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

1311

Good measurement
Reliability
The degree to which measures are free from random
error and therefore yield consistent results.
An indicator of a measures internal consistency.

Validity
The accuracy of a measure or the extent to
which a score truthfully represents a concept.
Does a scale measure what was intended to be
measured?

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

1312

Good measurement
Sensitivity
A measurement instruments ability to accurately
measure variability in stimuli or responses.
Generally increased by adding more response points or
adding scale items.

2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

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