Developing, evaluating, and using subjective scales of personality, preferences, and well-being: a guide to psychometrics for psychologists and economists

Psychometrics, an area of psychology that has developed to specifically ensure psychological constructs are measured with optimum reliability and validity, is virtually unheard of in economics. This chapter offers a guide to the necessary steps in developing subjective measures and introduces researchers to psychometrics, enabling them to evaluate measures used by others and use appropriate measures in their own research. The steps are the practical minimum of what one needs to show for psychometric development. Depending on the scale, other steps may be appropriate. For example, where there are predictions that mean levels of the scale will differ between groups (as in between clinical and non-clinical participants on a well-being measure), this should be shown directly. The chapter also highlights the importance of psychometrics for economic psychology research and then overview the essential components of developing psychometrically valid scales.