Evaluating The Measurement Validity Of Lifestyle Typologies

The validity of 2 lifestyle typologies - SRI International's Values and Lifestyles (VALS) system and the Lastovicka et al. Drinking-Driving (DD) typology - was examined empirically. Each typology was measured by 3 methods: a quantitative, statistical modeling of responses to Likert-type items collected in structured interviews and 2 qualitative, judgmental codings of data collected from a schedule of open-ended and projective tasks conducted in personal, in-home interviews. The data were collected from 100 men, ages 18 to 24 years. The results suggested the presence of convergent and discriminant validity for the DD system but less convergent validity and very little discriminant validity for VALS. Attempts to model the multimethod-multitrait (MM) correlation matrix with LISREL were not successful. Modeling the MM correlation matrices with Browne's (1984) multiplicative factor model was successful. Although the results demonstrated a case in which multiplicative factoring succeeded and the additive model did not, they should not be interpreted as supporting multiplicative models for all MM data.