Discan is both a scale and a method in
clinical psychology
Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or Mental disorder, dysfunction and to promote subjective mental ...
. The term is a contraction of the words "discretized" and "analog"
and is also known as categorical analogue scales.
As a scale, it is a type of ordered-metric scaling that yields a scale with internal reliability, and scale-points in excess of the number of initial anchors, more than would be the case with the Likert scale, though not as many as are achieved by the Analog scale. In
Louis Thurstone
Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 29 September 1955) was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his cont ...
's tradition, it is scored by paired-comparisons. Seeking optimality, it is a compromise between the competing merits and demerits of the Likert scale and the Analog scale. Its scoring system is a unitary non-transitional scales of severity that may have a maximum 8 or 10.
With the Discan method, four descriptive anchor-levels yield 14 scale-points, or three levels produce ten, representing some of the possible values of intensity of the variable.
The method involves a series of repeated comparisons of the true or perceived levels using one or two reference levels.
It was originated, for use in clinical psychology, by
M.B. Shapiro
MB, Mb or M. B. may refer to:
Businesses and organizations
* Mälarhöjden/Bredäng Hockey, a Swedish ice hockey club
* Media Blasters, an American multimedia entertainment distributor
* Mediobanca, and Italian company with Borsa Italiana sto ...
. It was developed within a span of six years.
The Likert and analog scales—with the implicit assumption about the judgmental process of rating—are considered part of the Discan family.
See also
*
Nomothetic
Nomothetic literally means "proposition of the law" (Greek derivation) and is used in philosophy, psychology, and law with differing meanings.
Etymology
In general humanities usage, ''nomothetic'' may be used in the sense of "able to lay down ...
*
Idiographic
References
A staging approach to measuring patient-centred subjective outcomes.
Bilsbury CD, Richman A. ''
Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl
The ''Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica'' is a Scandinavian peer-reviewed medical journal containing original research, systematic reviews etc. relating to clinical and experimental psychiatry. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journa ...
''. 2002;(414):5-40.
Clinical psychology
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