In the 1950s, psychologists at Stanford University, California, devised a scale for measuring hypnotic susceptibility.
In 2001, the amateur astronomer John Bortle devised a scale to help.
He devised a scale of sexual orientation, in which subjects ranged from a score of 0 (completely homosexual) to 6 (completely heterosexual).
I devised a scale to measure each of the components of love, and then did what is called "construct validation," testing both the theory and the scale with adult subjects around New Haven, Connecticut.
Still, devising a scale that could apply to regions as diverse as Central America's mountain ranges, Florida's flat topography and the many island nations that dot the Caribbean could take years to devise and might prove difficult to implement, experts warned.
Devising a scale that can take account of such extremes, and everything in between, has always proved difficult, and until recently, volcanologists have been stuck with a sort of Richter Scale known rather cumbersomely as the Volcanic Explosivity Index or VEI.
Astronomers have devised a scale to rate the danger posed by asteroids headed for Earth, comparable to the Richter scale of earthquake fame.
Additionally, devising a scale specifically designed to evaluate satisfaction with antidepressant treatment could be of interest in healthcare outcomes research.
For this assessment, we devised a scale in which points were assigned for study parameters indicative of good quality (e.g., well-defined populations, clear definitions, valid measures).
Future large-scale studies should devise a reliability scale to evaluate the questionnaire.
