A comparison of AME and CR100 for scaling perceived exertion

In psychophysical studies of the relation between perceived magnitude and physical stimulus, interest has focused on the preciseness of growth functions. Very little interest has been devoted to natural levels of an "absolute" character and to the validity of direct measurements. In this article, the Category (C)-Ratio (R) (CR) scaling methodology, developed by Borg (1973, 1977, 1982) is presented together with a new CR scale: the CR100 scale. In an experiment on perceived exertion, CR100 was compared with Absolute Magnitude Estimation (AME). Perceived exertion has the advantage of having easily measured physiological variables that can function as validity criteria. 32 persons (16 men and 16 women) participated as subjects on two different occasions, and the presentation order was counterbalanced. Results from CR100 and AME could be described equally well with psychophysical functions. The exponents obtained with CR100 were n = 1.60 for women and n = 1.69 for men, and the corresponding exponents for AME were n = 1.60 for women and n = 1.46 for men (with a "noise" constant included in the function). ANOVA showed that CR100 could make the predicted differentiation between sexes, whereas AME could not. This drawback with AME was also found when using the methods to predict working capacity.