All
I apologise for the slightly off topic nature of this question and will keep it
brief (I am prepared to wear any flames and humbly apologise for the blatantly
non S focus).
In many fields (eg psychology, marketing, political science) it is common to
add and average ordinal ratings as though they are numbers in a way that is on
the face of it completely inappropriate. Similarly, people use ordinary
correlation coefficients when they should use polychoric correlations; bog
standard continuous response linear models when they should have some sort of
more complex GLM; etc. However, my hunch and to a certain degree experience is
that at least sometimes this approach does not do too much damage to the data
(eg more complex appropriate responses come up with similar results).
1) What are people's views? Is it unfair, for example, to say "such scales
should never be added and averaged"?
2) Where should I look for the literature on this? (what literature I have
found concentrates on pointing out the flaws of common techniques and the
importance of using some more sophisticated methods, usually one developed by
the author; but I have not seen a comprehensive conceptual, theoretical and
empirical comparison of the cheats' methods versus the "proper" methods)
cheers, ta, and sorry again
PE
|