ABSTRACT
The term “scale” is most frequently used in social science to refer to measurements that involve judgement, or subjective ratings. Scales to measure human responses come in a bewildering number of varieties. The psychophysicists took the lead in scaling human responses when they began work on how different stimuli are perceived by a person. Scales that measure intentions are of great importance to all research that aims to change people’s behavior. I.Q. and other tests of mental capacity involve challenging problems of measurement and scaling. In stimulus-oriented scaling the researcher is interested in differences among responses by the same subject to variation among stimuli. Scales can consist of a simple item in which order one ranks racial groups by liking, and which candidates one intends to vote for. The simplest type of composite scale presents several items to the respondent and considers a sum of the responses to the items to be the scale score.
