Thinking About Sum Scores Yet Again, Maybe the Last Time, We Don't Know, Oh No . . .: A Comment on.

The relative advantages and disadvantages of sum scores and estimated factor scores are issues of concern for substantive research in psychology. Recently, while championing estimated factor scores over sum scores, McNeish offered a trenchant rejoinder to an article by Widaman and Revelle, which had critiqued an earlier paper by McNeish and Wolf. In the recent contribution, McNeish misrepresented a number of claims by Widaman and Revelle, rendering moot his criticisms of Widaman and Revelle.

What are the mathematical bounds for coefficient α?

Coefficient α, although ubiquitous in the research literature, is frequently criticized for being a poor estimate of test reliability. In this note, we consider the range of α and prove that it has no lower bound (i.e.

It's about time: Emphasizing temporal dynamics in dynamic personality regulation.

People change over time. These changes are thought to represent some self-regulatory, dynamic processes. However, dynamic processes need to be distinguished from mere stochastic variation.

Understanding the Magnitude of Psychological Differences Between Women and Men Requires Seeing the Forest and the Trees.

Whether women and men are psychologically very similar or quite different is a contentious issue in psychological science. This article clarifies this issue by demonstrating that larger and smaller sex/gender differences can reflect differing ways of organizing the same data. For single psychological constructs, larger differences emerge from averaging multiple indicators that differ by sex/gender to produce scales of a construct's overall typicality for women versus men.

Thinking thrice about sum scores, and then some more about measurement and analysis.

Measurement is fundamental to all research in psychology and should be accorded greater scrutiny than typically occurs. Among other claims, McNeish and Wolf (Thinking twice about sum scores. Behavior Research Methods, 52, 2287-2305) argued that use of sum scores (a) implies that a highly constrained latent variable model underlies items comprising a scale, and (b) may misrepresent or bias relations with other criteria.