Scale Development: Theory and Applications

Front Cover
SAGE Publications, Jun 1, 2011 - Mathematics - 216 pages
This book presents complex concepts in a way that helps students to understand the logic underlying the creation, use, and evaluation of measurement instruments and to develop a more intuitive feel for how scales work. Robert DeVellis demystifies measurement by relating it to familiar experiences and by emphasizing a conceptual rather than a strictly mathematical understanding. Students' attention is drawn to important concepts that are foundational for subsequent topics, with opportunities provided to test understanding through chapter summaries and exercises.

About the author (2011)

Robert F. DeVellis is Research Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education (School of Public Health), and the Psychology Department (College of Arts and Sciences) at the University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill. In addition, he is a Core Faculty Member for UNC's Robert Wood Johnson Clinical ScholarsProgram (School of Medicine). Dr. DeVellis is also Director of the Measurement and Methods Core of the UNCCenter on Minority Aging and Associate Director of the UNC Arthritis Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center,where he also is a member of that center's Methodology Core. He has served on the Board of Directors for theAmerican Psychological Association's Division of Health Psychology (38), on the Arthritis Foundations'Clinical/Outcomes/therapeutics Research Study Section, and on the Advisory Board of the Veterans AffairsMeasurement Excellence Initiative. He has served on the editorial boards of Arthritis Care and Research and HealthEducation Research and as Guest Editor, Guest Associate Editor, or reviewer for more than two dozen otherjournals. His current research interests include examining interpersonal factors that facilitate adaptation to chronicillness and measuring social and behavioral variables related to health and illness. He has served as PrincipalInvestigator or Co-Investigator since the early 1980s on a series of research projects funded by the federalgovernment and private foundations.

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