The rating of speeches: Scale independence∗

Computational costs of this study were supported in part by the University of Iowa Computing Center. The assistance of Dr. Harold Bechtoldt in handling the factor analyses is gratefully acknowledged.

Factor analyses were made of instructor ratings of 442 freshman speeches. Each speech was rated on 11 scales. It was found that only 3 factors, rather than 11, were actually being discriminated among by the'raters. These were an analysis‐content factor, a delivery factor, and a language factor. It was also demonstrated that the variance not attributable to one of these three factors could be accounted for in terms of rating unreliability.

Notes

Computational costs of this study were supported in part by the University of Iowa Computing Center. The assistance of Dr. Harold Bechtoldt in handling the factor analyses is gratefully acknowledged.