Shlomit Levy

Two structural laws for intelligence tests

Abstract This article discusses two structural laws for intelligence tests. After reviewing the relevant definitions and the empirical evidence supporting these laws, it proposes an extension of the laws, namely, that of a cylindrical structure. Supporting data are presented from the American and Israeli versions of the Wechsler WISC-R. The first law of intelligence testing concerns the sign of correlation coefficients (and monotonicity of regression). It gives conditions under which one can expect all correlations between intelligence test items to be positive (or, at worst, zero). The first law is confirmed by the date of the Wechsler tests. The second law concerns the relative sizes of the correlation coefficients among intelligence items, and specifies a two-facet design for the content of the items from which to expect a circular (radex) arrangement of the items according to their intercorrelations. Previous work on these two laws was largely confined to paper and pencil tests. For the 12 subtests of the WISC-R, a further design facet is employed, with the following elements: paper and pencil, manual manipulations, and oral. This provides items whose intercorrelations require a three-dimensional representation linking them to a cylindrical interpretation in the light of the three design facets. The new facet corresponds to the axis of the cylinder, while the other two facets correspond to the circular base of the cylinder. The cylindrical correspondence holds for both the American and the Israeli (Hebrew language) versions of the WISC-R, and for each of the yearly age levels from 6 to 16.

On the Multivariate Structure of Wellbeing

A mapping sentence is provided for defining the universe of observations of wellbeing. According to this, assessment of wellbeing is attitudinal. Data from several studies verify that the First Law of Attitude holds for wellbeing. These data also show the structure of the interrelationships among the variables to be that of intermeshing cylindrexes, in an SSA space of four dimensions. Areas of life play the role of polarizing facets, while self-versus-community and situation-versus-treatment serve as axial facets. Modulating facets include primary-to-secondary interaction, and generality-to-specificity.

A Faceted Cross-Cultural Analysis of Some Core Social Values

This chapter is an attempt to develop and tentatively test a theory on the structure of interrelations among “core” values for Western Europeans. Guided by the facet-analytic approach, we shall first clarify and define the concept “value,” and then go on to discuss the theory as evolved and pretested in the course of an ongoing cooperative cross-national research program.

On the definition and varieties of attitude and wellbeing

In a paper published in Social Indicators Research in 1975, Levy and Guttman proved the proposition that wellbeing is a special case of attitude. They exploited this result for establishing a certain lawfulness for wellbeing behavior, and built on this for revealing more specialized features of the lawfulness. Five years later in this same journal, Andrews and McKennell published two papers on exactly the same proposition, but without proving it, without building on known relevant lawfulness of attitudinal behavior, and without mentioning (neither positively nor negatively) the Levy-Guttman work. The Andrews-McKennell papers are shown to be a retrogression rather than a scientific advance, being conceptually confused, using inappropriate data analysis, and dealing with arbitrary assumptions which are either untested, untestable or false.

The personal and the political : Israelis' perception of well-being in times of war and peace

This study investigated the perception of personal well-being among different segments of Israeli society for various levels of national stress. The three measures utilized (health worries, happiness, and coping) were derived from 203 surveys of national samples conducted between June 1967 and August 1979 (N = 112,005). Gender, education, age, religiosity, and ethnic origin were correlated with these indicators during periods of low, medium, and high national stress. In general, lower levels of well-being were reported by women, the less educated, the older age groups, the religious, and those of Eastern origin, as predicted. Contrary to expectation, health worries decreased during times of high national stress. The results are discussed in the context of differences between measures of well-being, the intensity of stress on the national level, and the role of each of the above sociodemographic variables as a resource, buffer or handicap, in dealing with stress.

The conical structure of adjustive behavior

Wellbeing and coping have usually been treated as separate topics in previous research. The present study proposes a general framework for adjustive behavior which incorporates both previous topics as special cases. This framework shows definitional similarities and differences among wellbeing, coping and further special cases. Empirical data are presented which show a correspondence between the facets of the definitional system and the matrix of intercorrelations of the variables defined thereby. The correspondence is that of a conex, that is, the facets correspond to a conical coordinate system for the SSA space that reproduces the correlation matrix.The data were gathered as part of the Continuing Survey conducted jointly by the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research and the Hebrew Universitys Communications Institute. The population sampled is the adult urban and rural Jewish population of Israel, over 20 years of age in mid-December 1977. Interviews were conducted in the home through closed questionnaires, 27 of the items being of adjustive behavior.Monotonicity (weak) correlation coefficients were calculated for each pair of adjustive behavior items, for each of the urban and rural samples. Two major hypotheses were to be tested by the matrices of these coefficients: the First Law and the Cylindrical Law for attitude. Both laws were verified in each of the samples, but with the new finding that for adjustive behavior the cylinder degenerates into a cone.

Styles of Social Justice Judgments as Portrayed by Partial-Order Scalogram Analysis A Cross-Cultural Example

This study proposes a typology of adolescents’ social justice judgments (SJJs) as assessed by their attribution of importance to various distribution rules representing two generic principles of justice (egalitarian and equitarian). Four basic styles of SJJ are identified: I. Ecumenical (emphasis on both egalitarian and equitarian justice); II. Pure Egalitarian (emphasis on egalitarian justice); III. Pure Equitarian (emphasis on equity rules); and IV. Withdrawn (emphasis on neither). This proposed typology is empirically supported by POSAC (Partial-Order Scalogram Analysis with base Coordinates), which is used to analyse SJJs among adolescents in Israeli and East German samples. The typology is also found useful in discriminating between adolescents in these two countries: the proportion of the Ecumenical and Pure Egalitarian styles is higher among East Germans than among Israelis, while the proportion of the Pure Equitarian and Withdrawn styles is higher among Israelis.

A cross-cultural analysis of the structure and levels of attitudes towards acts of political protest

A European team conducted a comparative study of three modalities of attitudes, towards each of ten kinds of protest acts, of citizens in five Western democracies. Their data were kindly put at our disposal for further analysis. The present paper refines the definitional framework for the attitudes by introducing two further content facets: the strength of the protest act and distinction between acts of omission and of commission. Hypotheses based on the more complete definitional system concern (a) the structure of the intercorrelations among the 30 attitudes, and (b) the relative levels of positiveness of attitude towards the separate acts. Empirical testing of the correlational hypothesis by Smallest Space Analysis reveals a triplex lawfulness which is invariant across the five countries, based on the facets of the definitional system. In this sense, the five Western democracies share a common culture of attitudes towards protest acts. Lawfulness is also found, relating the facets to level of positiveness of the attitudes, though the five democracies differ with respect to the levels for separate acts. Individual differences remain between the countries within their common culture.

Partial order analysis of crime indicators

A frequent variety of typological system is that which results when a given population is classified simultaneously by several social indicators. When the categories of each indicator are ordered, and in a sense common to all the indicators, a partial order is automatically defined for the system. The empirical problem is to ascertain the dimensionality and the substantive meaning of the partly ordered system. This will be illustrated here by the case of the characterization of American cities by their crime rates, the data analysis employing the technique of Partial Order Structuple (Scalogram) Analysis.

Selective observance as a component of Jewish identity in contemporary Israeli society

Of all the intergroup conflicts in Israeli Jewish society, the most acute social problem is constituted by relationships between religious and non-religious Jews. At the same time, the findings of comprehensive research carried out in the early 1990s into the religious behavior of the Jewish population in Israel indicate that Israeli Jews do feel a commitment to Jewish continuity and to the Jewish character of Israeli society, even if they selectively—but systematically—orient their patterns of observing tradition. Thus some traditions are kept or marked by many, while others—in particular those relating to the “proscriptive” precepts of the Sabbath—are not observed by the majority and produce a rift among Israeli Jews. This article discusses and analyzes the nature of the selective observance of tradition in Israel as a component of the Jewish identity of Israeli Jews, and in particular of those Jews who are not religious. Although there is a general consensus mat Israel should have a Jewish character, on the one hand there is resistance to religious coercion, and on the other hand, formulation has not yet occurred of Jewish attributes of a “Jewish State” which is not necessarily religious, apart from selective secularization of religious symbols.