Thurstone equal appearing intervals – UGC NET Question

The Thurstone scale, or equal-appearing interval scale, involves having judges rate a large pool of statements on favourableness toward an attitude object. Statements with diverse scale values are then selected, and respondents indicate which statements they agree with. Their attitude score is computed as the mean or median of the scale values of the agreed statements. Thus, the method described in the stem is correctly called the Thurstone scale.

Option A:
Guttman scaling aims at cumulative ordering of items where endorsement of a higher-level item implies endorsement of all lower-level ones, and it does not rely on expert-assigned interval values in the same way.

Option B:
The Thurstone approach seeks to create intervals that appear equal in favourableness to judges, thereby approximating an interval scale for attitude measurement. Because the stem emphasises expert-assigned values and mean scores based on endorsed items, this option fits exactly.

Option C:
Likert scales rely on respondents’ ratings across ordered categories and summing scores, without expert judgment of individual item scale values, so they do not match the description given.

Option D:
The Bogardus scale focuses on social distance across relational categories and does not employ expert valuations of statements’ favourableness.