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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tyumeneva, Yulia, Vergeles, Kseniya
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
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.
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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
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