“Likert Scales: How to (Ab)use Them” – II

One of my colleagues told me about a weblog that replied on my previous entry entitled “Likert Scale: How to (Ab)use them?”. I browsed through the weblog and I found it is very useful as well as very informative. I would like to encourage all visitors to visit and read the weblog here.

16 years later, the debate continues.  A nice discussion of the debate is found on the Research Methodology blog by Hisham bin Md-Basir.  It’s a nice blog, with thoughtful entries that summarize methodological articles in the social and design sciences.

To be fair, though, this blog entry summarizes an article on the “likert scales are not interval” side of the debate.  For a balanced listing of references, see Can Likert Scale Data Ever Be Continuous?

The Online CONSTRUCT VALIDITY Calculator

An innovation by Hisham Md-Basir, Sulaiman Mahzan, Nur-Huda Jaafar, Rashidah Mokhtar, Noraisyah Abdl-Aziz, and; Mazlyda Abdul-Rahman (2008).

 

This calculator is a very useful tool to help researchers to calculate Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE), especially for researchers who analyze their survey data using covariance-based structural equation modelling (SEM) like AMOS and LISREL. CR and AVE are two important parameters for estimating the construct validity of latent variables in quantitative survey study.

 

The current version of AMOS for example, does not provide facility to calculate the CR and AVE directly. Users have to calculate them manually, or use spreadsheet software like EXCEL to expedite the calculation. For researchers with low skill of computer programming, they will certainly find that the calculation for CR and AVE is lengthy, tedious and full of hassle.

 

This calculator offers a complete solution to that problem. With a user friendly Windows-based environment, the calculation of CR and AVE can be done in just a few mouse clicks.

 

You may try to use the calculator at http://www.hishammb.net/cvc, but very sorry to inform you here that the user ’s manual is still on the way. Soon when it is ready, I’ll upload the manual here.

 

I We would be very glad if any of you could give me us some feedbacks on the calculator, especially any comment that can further improve the innovation. For that, I we would like to thank you in advance.

 

NOTE: This calculator can only estimate two aspects of Construct Validity, i.e. the Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity. A brief and easy explanation of these two aspects of Construct Validity can be viewed here.