Empirical distributions of correlations as a tool for scale reduction

Abstract

A Visual Basic program for generating a distribution of correlations as a tool for scale reduction is presented; the program is available free from the author and runs on IBM-compatible personal computers under the Windows 95/98/NT operating systems. The program generates a list of item combinations and correlations between the unit weighted sum of the items and a criterion score. The list can be used to locate item combinations that have high correlations with the original full-length test. An example application is presented to illustrate the use of the program. The compiled program and its source code can be downloaded from http://personal.bgsu.edu/~stanton/r_crunch/r_crunch.zip.