MEASUREMENT OF 'POLITICAL.' PREFERENCES: A further study of direct and indirect scaling methods

The direct methods of ratio estimation and magnitude estimation and the indirect method of pair comparison were used to construct scales of liberalism and conservatism. It was found ( a ) that the scales of conservatism are linearly related to each other and ( b ) those of liberalism are also linearly related to each other but with a discontinuity in the middle of the range; one linear function for the conservative statements and another for the liberal statements, with the discontinuity occurring in the middle of the subjective scale. Liberalism vs. conservatism was found to be reverse. The linear function between all kinds of scales as well as the reverse relation between liberalism vs. conservatism suggest that the continuum of political preferences is metathetic.