A Note on Computer Programs for Guttman ScalingAuthor(s): Chad GordonSource: Sociometry, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1963), pp. 129-130Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2785732 .

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A Note on Computer Programs for Guttman Scaling

CHAD GORDON, University of California, Los Angeles

Two computer programs for Guttman scaling, together with complete information on the details of their use, are now available from the Health Sciences Computing Facility, University of California Medical Center, Los Angeles 24 (in FORTRAN or other machine languages, as decks of punched cards, or on magnetic tape). The programmer was Ronald Mitchell of the Computing Facility staff, and both programs have been tested and used on an IBM 7090 in connection with construction of scales of self- esteem and of prestige orientation for use in the writer's research on self- conception.

The first program (called Guttman #1 or BMD 05S) takes answers from questionnaire or interview items, assigns weights to them, ranks the respondents from most to least favorable to the concept at hand according to Guttman's Cornell technique, gives frequencies of responses and errors for each question, assigns a Guttman scale score and a rank to each respond- ent, and finally computes both the coefficient of reproducibility and Edwards' coefficient of minimum marginal reproducibility (MMR) for the entire scale. This program can handle nearly twenty thousand respondents answering up to twenty-five questions with as many as seven answer categories each. Dependent upon the size of each of the above, Guttman #1 usually takes less than ten minutes of 7090 time.

Guttman #2 is written in three parts (BMD 06S, 07S; & 08S) to do all that #1 does with two additional features. (1) The program maximizes the reproducibility of the items by selectively combining response categories of multi-category items so as to reduce the number of errors, and respondents are reranked after each combination (an impossible task if working by hand). Combinations may also be forced at will by the investigator on theoretical or empirical grounds. (2) If desired, the program will further reduce error by eliminating items from consideration in the scale. This feature allows selection of a specified number of final items from pre-test data collected with a larger number, so that actual studies may proceed with pre- sharpened instruments. The rationale for retention of items is pragmatic but interpretable: minimization of errors of reproducibility, and thus an assumed increase in uni-dimensionality of the resulting scale. It is not, however, a substitute for prior conceptual clarity.

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130 COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR GUTTMAN SCALING

The limits on input data are the same as for #1, but #2 takes consider- ably more computer time if there are many response categories to be com- bined. The inclusion of the MMR calculation is of considerable value here because of the tendency of the program to reduce error by combining cat- egories to create items with extreme marginals.

ERROR IN DECEMBER ISSUE In the article by Leonard Weller, entitled, "The Relationship of Birth

Order to Anxiety: A Replication of the Schachter Findings," Sociometry, 25, (December, 1962), on page 417, the ninth line of the Conclusion, "later- born" should be substituted for "first-born." The corrected line should read: "The findings that later-born subjects arrived more anxious is suggestive, but, unfortunately, the original study did not include a comparable measure."

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