Representing Attitudes as Intervals

Exploring the inadequacies of traditional attitude measurement, this work introduces an innovative representation of attitudes as intervals, defined by their midpoint (favourability) and latitude (generality). It reformulates Coombs' Theory of Unidimensional Unfolding and examines 18 distance measures, including the Minkowski r-metric and Generalised Hyperbolic Cosine Model (GHCM). Empirical tests reveal that the triangle inequality fails, indicating a non-metric judgement space, while only the GHCM meets both tests under specific conditions. Aimed at social science researchers, it offers new insights into attitude analysis.