Ipsative Data

The term ipsative (from the Latin ipsum, meaning self) was originally coined by Raymond Cattell in 1944, in the framework of factor analytic approaches for psychological assessment to describe measurements that are meaningful only relative to a person but that cannot be directly compared between persons. For example, if two persons S1 and S2 are asked to ranked three occupations A, B, and C, these two persons can give the same ranking [A, B, C] but S1 considers these occupations as favorite occupations whereas S2 considers these occupations as dreadful. Therefore, even though the preference order on the occupations can be compared, the participants cannot be compared, as they cannot be considered similar because, on a continuum describing their preference for these occupations, they would ...