The measurement of unobservable (latent) variables has been a recent phenomenon in the manufacturing research area. Most available empirical research in manufacturing has been exploratory in nature and has borrowed its methods extensively from other fields such as psychology, sociology, and marketing. Manufacturing researchers have, however, overlooked the assessment of unidimensionality, an essential measurement property and a basic assumption of measurement theory. An explicit evaluation of unidimensionality can be accomplished with a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of individual measures as specified by a multiple-indicator measurement model. A paradigm for scale development incorporating CFA for the assessment of unidimensionality is outlined here along with methodology to assess other measurement properties such as convergent validity, discriminant validity, composite reliability, and average variance extracted.
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