DISCUSSION OF A Methodology for Developing Measurement Criteria for Assurance Services: An Application in Information Systems Assurance.

This article discusses measurement theory which has its conceptual basis in mathematical set theory and in concerns about measurement scales and index numbers in psychology and economics. Measurement theory, in its most basic form, is about the systematic assignment of numbers to represent some attributes of an object or an event of interest, it contains a succinct summary of the formal properties of a measurement system derived from the underlying mathematical set theory and the properties of measurement scales. Basically, measurement can be examined at two levels, the purposive level and the factual level. The purposive level deals with the relevance of measures defined by the interaction of the decision context and the behavioral characteristics of the users that impact their ability to use the measurements provided. The factual level deals with the properties of the measurement assignment process. This involves both defining the items to be measured and the process of assigning numerical values (or qualitative descriptors) to those items.