The Concept of Scale in Educational Measurement (Published)
The study is a resume of the concept of scale in educational measurement. Rating scale was defined as a technique through which the observer or rater categorizes the objects, events or persons on a continuum represented by a series of continuous numerals. Attempt was made to clarify the purpose of rating scales to include measuring teachers’ performance/effectiveness and personality, anxiety, stress, emotional intelligence and so on. The uses of rating scales to include helpful in writing reports to parents, helpful in filling out admission blanks for colleges and helpful in finding out student needs among others. Types of rating scales includes comparative rating scale, graphic scale and numeric scale. Scaling affective characteristics was seen as having the thorough review of the theory concerned with the affective characteristics and to generate the perceptions, attributes or behaviors of a person with high or low levels of this characteristic. Stages involved in the development of rating scale was enumerated to include; defining the construct to be measured, designing the scale, generating an item pool, page layout, administering the scale, sample size, checking the data, coefficient – alpha and factor analysis.
Keywords: Construct, Factor analysis, Measurement, rating scale, validity