Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Scales and Scaling 327
wealth in village in Papua New Guinea. The idea of property ownership may
not have existed in that culture prior to contact with Europeans and Australians
in the mid-20th century. It was well understood when Kortendick got there,
but some things, like cars, were too expensive for anyone there to possess on
their own. So villagers bought and owned those items collectively (Kortendick,
personal communication).
Indexes That Don’t Scale
Indexes that do not scale can still be useful in comparing populations. Dennis
Werner (1985) studied psychosomatic stress among Brazilian farmers who
were facing the uncertainty of having their lands flooded by a major dam. He
used a 20-item stress index developed by Berry (1976).
Since the index did not constitute a unidimensional scale, Werner could not
differentiate among his informants (in terms of the amount of stress they were
under) as precisely as DeWalt could differentiate among his informants (in
terms of their quality of life). But farmers in Werner’s sample gave a stress
response to an average of 9.13 questions on the 20-item test, while Berry had
found that Canadian farmers gave stress responses on an average of 1.79 questions.
It is very unlikely that a difference of such magnitude between two populations
would occur by chance.
Likert Scales
Perhaps the most commonly used form of scaling is attributed to Rensis
Likert (1932). Likert introduced the ever-popular 5-point scale that we talked
about in chapter 10 (on questionnaire construction). Recall that a typical question
might read as follows:
Please consider the following statements carefully. After each statement, circle the
answer that most reflects your opinion. Would you say you agree a lot with the statement,
agree a little, are neutral, disagree a little, or disagree a lot with each statement?
Ok, here’s the first statement:
When I need credit to bring my bananas to market, I can just go to the agricultural
bank in Ralundat and they give it to me.
Agree a lot
Agree
Neutral
Disagree a little
Disagree a lot