ABSTRACT
The first step for the scale builder, and the first criterion on which his work can be evaluated, is writing or finding items to include in the scale. It is usually assumed that the scale builder knows enough about the field to construct an instrument that will cover an important theoretical construct well enough to be useful to other researchers. Investigators of the "authoritarian personality" lifted key sentiments expressed in small group conversations, personal interviews, and written remarks and transformed them into scale items. The item-analysis phase of scale construction should be incorporated into the determinination of the dimensionality, scalability, or homogeneity of the test items. The demanding hurdle is the ability of the scale scores to reliably single out those liberals or conservatives, agnostics or believers, in heterogeneous groups. For assessing general levels of some attitude state, well-worded single items may do the job just as well as longer scales no matter how competently the scales are devised.
