>I have been following some of the recent postings on the SEMNET regarding
>"competitive strategy" and how one could think of competitive strategy on
>different dimensions (innovation, advertising, etc.).  Would it ever make
>sense to sum the scores on these dimensions to get an overall competitive
>strategy score?
>

I would suggest your looking into books on psychological measurement.
One of the motives for disaggregating the variables into homogeneous
sets of variables is to get scores that are "purer" in the sense that
they represent one thing.  A summed score can take on the same value
even when the scores entering into the sum are different values.  Such
a summed score would not have a unique meaning for any given value.

Also, do you sense how "competitive strategy" does not describe a
variable?  What varies?  Can there be more or less of "competitive
strategy"?  "Degree of competitive strategy".  Is there such a thing?
There are many ways to compete, so how do you come up with a single
score for it?

>In a slightly different context, if I am interested in measuring a compound
>emotion like delight (let's say defined as a combination of joy and
>surprise), can I come up with a set of items measuring joy, a set of items
>measuring surprise, and then combine(or sum) the scores to get a measure of
>delight?  Or, is one forced to look for emotion adjectives or other
>indicators that reflect the emotion of delight.

If "delight" means the composite you describe, yes, you can do this. It
would have loadings on two factors. But these ought to be relatively
stable loadings.  A different weighted combination might represent
something else, like mildly negative joy and high degree of surprize
might represent shocked disappointment at failing to win what you thought
you would win.

Stan Mulaik