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Online seminar!
Measurement in psychology is implicitly considered similar to measurement in the natural sciences, e.g. physics or chemistry. This attitude is probably a legacy of early 20th century psychophysics when researchers tried to quantify perception phenomena such as, for example, auditory intensity (see Stevens' Sone Scale). However, there is a major difference between measurement in the natural sciences and in psychology. In the latter case, the objects of measurement are not passive material, but are actively participating in the measurement procedure, with their own cognitive mechanisms and biases, their cultural imprint, their linguistic and pragmatic understanding of verbal stimuli, and their response decisions. In addition, the phenomena to be measured and the assigned numerical scales are not clearly defined. They are latent constructs that are not directly observable. It is by no means clear and in most cases still unproven whether these psychological phenomena follow the mathematical rules of our numeral system. The present seminar is dedicated to basic questions like these, to problems of intercultural measurement, and ultimately to some practical guidelines and tools to deal with the often ignored problems of measurement in psychology where a human individual is the knower and the known at the same time.
As a little appetizer you may have a look at:
Michell, J. (2008). Is psychometrics pathological science? Measurement, 6, 7-24.
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