ASSESSMENT OF INFORMATION LOSS IN SCORING MONOTONE ITEMS

For monotone, dichotomous items, two interpretations of the usual scoring procedure may be made. One interpretation (A) is that failure of the items to form a perfect Guttman Scale leads to loss of discriminative infor- mation when the usual procedure of scoring is applied. Another interpretation (B) is that nonunidimensionality of the item-set leads to information confusion under usual scoring procedures. Measures of information loss for each interpretation are developed and tested using Monte Carlo methods. It is concluded that interpretation (B) is the most appropriate.