Social scientists have developed a large number of indices and scales for quantifying important sociocultural traits and variables. For example, the social stratification indices mentioned in Chapter 5 usually provide numerical scores in terms of which individuals in a community can be ranked along a continuum of social prestige and/or socioeconomic success. The Guttman scale is a specialized technique that is intended to produce an ordinal scale with a built-in logical structural feature that demonstrates the unidimensionality and fitness of the items included as indicators (Guttman, 1944).

Goodenough (1963) has discussed some of the logical properties and potential uses of the Guttman scale for anthropological research. An example from his study of social behavior among the people of Truk provides an excellent illustration of this technique of analysis.

From inspection of the patterning in Table B. 1 we note that the elements of respect behavior are ranged from left to right in decreasing order of some quality that we can regard as “implied respect value.” Performance of a high-respect behavior (e.g., using the respect term faajiro) carries a greater implication of respect than does avoidance behavior.