This research note responds to the question of whether a convenience sample of undergraduate students may be successfully utilized in concept development and in scale construction, and in what way the results are comparable to the findings of a representative national sample. The results of a Mokken analysis in both samples support the hypothesis that convenience samples have utility in concept development and in developing measures that can also be used in representative samples.
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8.
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9.
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10.
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11.
OmmundsenR.LarsenK. S. (1999) Attitudes toward illegal immigration in Scandinavia and United States. Psychological Reports, 84, 1331–1338.
12.
SearsD. O. (1986) College sophomores in the laboratory: influences of a narrow data base on social psychology's view of human nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 515–530.
13.
SijtsmaK.MolenaarI. W. (1996) Mokken Scale analysis for polychotomous items: theory, a computer program and an empirical application. Quality and Quantity, 24, 173–188.
14.
SijtsmaK.MolenaarI. W. (2002) Introduction to Nonparametric Item Response Theory. In Measurement methods for the social sciences.Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
15.
Van Der VeerK.OmmundsenR.LarsenK. S.Van LeH.KrumovK.EerniceR. E.RomansG. P. (2004) The structure of attitudes toward illegal immigration: the development of cross-national cumulative scales. Psychological Reports, 94, 897–906.
16.
Van SchuurW. H. (2003) Mokken Scale analyses: between the Guttman Scale and Parametric Item Response Theory. Political Analysis, 11, 139–163.
17.
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