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Book Cover
E-book
Author Michell, Joel

Title Measurement in psychology : critical history of a methodological concept / Joel Michell
Published New York : Cambridge University Press, ©1999

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 246 pages)
Series Ideas in context
Ideas in context ; 53
Contents Numerical data and the meaning of measurement -- Quantitative psychology's intellectual inheritance -- Quantity, number and measurement in science -- Early psychology and the quantity objection -- Making the representational theory of measurement -- The status of psychophysical measurement -- A definition made to measure -- Quantitative psychology and the revolution in measurement theory
Summary This book traces how such a seemingly immutable idea as measurement proved so malleable when it collided with the subject matter of psychology. It locates philosophical and social influences (such as scientism, practicalism and Pythagoreanism) reshaping the concept and, at the core of this reshaping, identifies a fundamental problem: the issue of whether psychological attributes really are quantitative. It argues that the idea of measurement now endorsed within psychology actually subverts attempts to establish a genuinely quantitative science and it urges a new direction. It relates views on measurement by thinkers such as Holder, Russell, Campbell and Nagel to earlier views, like those of Euclid and Oresme. Within the history of psychology, it considers contributions by Fechner, Cattell, Thorndike, Stevens and Suppes, among others. It also contains a non-technical exposition of conjoint measurement theory and recent foundational work by leading measurement theorist R. Duncan Luce
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 224-242) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Psychometrics -- History
Psychology -- Methodology -- History
PSYCHOLOGY -- Assessment, Testing & Measurement.
Psychology -- Methodology
Psychometrics
Methodologie
Psychometrie
Psychologie
Psychometrie.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
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