Use of data collapsing strategies to identify latent variables in CHP questionnaire data

Abstract

A dataset of 399 junior and middle school students completed the Cognitive Holding Power questionnaire, which distinguishes between first-order procedural thinking to achieve specific goals and second-order solving of problems involving new situations. Factor analysis using the original 5-point scale indicated that these student responses were not completely consistent with the theorised two-factor structure. Some items contributed only marginally or became associated with the "wrong" factor. Analyses of these test data in the present study compared the outcomes of collapsing a 5-point Likert scale into 4- versus 2-category response options. By convention, four categorical points represent the minimum acceptable set for factor analysis (Byrne, 2001). However, collapsing from five to two response categories more fully corrects other methodological issues related to the occurrence of disordered difficulty in levels of response categories within items, indicative that participants' responses to items response patterns of the item set do not fit the expected sequence.