Center for category based measurements

Society's need for knowledge about experiences, feelings, behaviors, and abilities is increasing. It is important to know how people and society feel or how a product or service is perceived, and to be able to compare how these change over time and between different areas, for example when making decisions about priorities, efforts, and effects.

When measuring experiences, feelings, behaviors and abilities, tools such as questionnaires, indexes, or observation protocols are used. Data is usually collected in categories, such as Agree or Disagree. For these measurements to be useful and provide reliable measurement, it is required that basic metrological principles are applied, which is often not the case today. When basic metrology principles are used in these measurements, they are called category based measurements.

Develops the methodology and new working methods

RISE has been working for several years to develop methodology and working methods for measurement quality assurance of experiences, feelings, behaviors, and abilities. The knowledge platform will develop generic methods and approaches for category based measurements that can be applied in different contexts.

In this work, the knowledge platform will propose a methodological and metrological framework, lead and participate in research and development projects and develop item banks. An item bank is a set of tasks, such as questions in a test or statements in a survey, together with an established degree of difficulty. An item bank can be compared with a calibrated weight set and is used to obtain comparable measurement values of people's experiences, feelings, behaviors, and abilities.

A sustainable organization for measurement quality assurance

For the physical quantities (length, mass, time, etc.) there has long been an internationally established measurement quality infrastructure. In Sweden, RISE as the National Metrology Institute is responsible for ensuring access to quality-assured and traceable measurements for society through its National Laboratories. However, the corresponding measurement quality infrastructure is missing for categorybased measurements.

Through dialogues with actors at various levels, including in the health care and academia, which have been going on for several years, it has emerged that there is a great need for a corresponding measurement quality infrastructure for category based measurements. An important part of the knowledge platform's work is to develop a proposal for a sustainable organization for measurement quality assurance of experiences, feelings, behaviors, and abilities:

The proposal.

Co-creation and networking

A further important part of the knowledge platform's work is that it takes place in co-creation with relevant actors. Read more about our expertise and in linked reports below and feel free to contact us if you want to be part of our network and thereby take part in developing measurement quality assurance of category based measurements.