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Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research
Measures of psychological attributes, such as motivation, typically involve rating scales, assuming that an attribute can be ordered. If an attribute has an ordinal structure, its levels stand in ordinal relations to one another, and these must be transitive. We tested if transitivity is preserved w...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514613/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658985 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.632991 |
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author | Tyumeneva, Yulia Vergeles, Kseniya |
author_facet | Tyumeneva, Yulia Vergeles, Kseniya |
author_sort | Tyumeneva, Yulia |
collection | PubMed |
description | Measures of psychological attributes, such as motivation, typically involve rating scales, assuming that an attribute can be ordered. If an attribute has an ordinal structure, its levels stand in ordinal relations to one another, and these must be transitive. We tested if transitivity is preserved when people compare different motives in terms of their importance to learning. We found transitivity violations in both strict (Study 1) and non-strict (Study 2) orderings in about half of the participants. Nevertheless, based on the distribution of such violations, we conclude that an ordinal structure of motivation can be found, but only when levels of motives differ noticeably. As the levels become subjectively similar, transitivity is not preserved, and the ordinal structure cannot be justified even in non-strict ordering. The findings question the mainstream practice of measuring psychological attributes before their structure is properly explored. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8514613 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85146132021-10-15 Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research Tyumeneva, Yulia Vergeles, Kseniya Front Psychol Psychology Measures of psychological attributes, such as motivation, typically involve rating scales, assuming that an attribute can be ordered. If an attribute has an ordinal structure, its levels stand in ordinal relations to one another, and these must be transitive. We tested if transitivity is preserved when people compare different motives in terms of their importance to learning. We found transitivity violations in both strict (Study 1) and non-strict (Study 2) orderings in about half of the participants. Nevertheless, based on the distribution of such violations, we conclude that an ordinal structure of motivation can be found, but only when levels of motives differ noticeably. As the levels become subjectively similar, transitivity is not preserved, and the ordinal structure cannot be justified even in non-strict ordering. The findings question the mainstream practice of measuring psychological attributes before their structure is properly explored. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8514613/ /pubmed/34658985 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.632991 Text en Copyright © 2021 Tyumeneva and Vergeles. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Tyumeneva, Yulia Vergeles, Kseniya Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research |
title | Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research |
title_full | Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research |
title_fullStr | Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research |
title_full_unstemmed | Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research |
title_short | Transitivity Violations Undermine Rating Scales in Motivation Research |
title_sort | transitivity violations undermine rating scales in motivation research |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514613/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34658985 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.632991 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT tyumenevayulia transitivityviolationsundermineratingscalesinmotivationresearch AT vergeleskseniya transitivityviolationsundermineratingscalesinmotivationresearch |