Attitudinal Information Research Articles

Gender and Participation in High School and College Instrumental Jazz Ensembles

This study is an examination of the relationship between gender and participation in high school and college instrumental jazz ensembles. Student demographic and attitudinal information was collected using the researcher-designed Instrumental Jazz Participation Survey (IJPS). Undergraduate college band students ( N=628) representing 15 programs offering degrees in music education were surveyed. Gender and jazz ensemble participation were found to be related at both levels; 52% of women and 80% of men surveyed reported playing jazz in high school, and 14% of women and 50% of men played in college. The results indicated that attitudes toward participation are influenced by both gender and jazz experience. Women and men were found to differ in their stated reasons for quitting jazz. Women's decisions to discontinue were affected by primary instrument selection, institutional obstacles that narrow participation options, feeling more comfortable in traditional ensembles, and an inability to connect jazz participation to career aspirations. April 21, 2004 October 1, 2004.

A Comparison of Health Professions Student Attitudes Regarding Tobacco Curricula and Interventionist Roles

Health care providers who feel prepared are more apt to assume tobacco interventionist roles; therefore, educational preparation is critical. A nonprobability sample of health professions students at an urban academic health center were asked to respond to a twenty-two-item survey eliciting demographic, behavioral, and tobacco-related attitudinal information. Frequency distributions were assessed with Pearson chi-square statistics. The overall response rate was 76.7 percent, and final sample size was 319. Current use of spit tobacco (ST) was 2.5 percent and current smoking 5.6 percent. In comparing current smokers to nonsmokers and current ST users to nonusers, we found that no differences in proportion agreeing with any of the five questions about attitudes and opinions were statistically significant at p-value 0.05. At least 70 percent of students from each of six health professions programs agreed it was their professional responsibility to help smokers quit, and at least 65 percent agreed to the same responsibility for helping ST users quit. The proportion agreeing that their programs had course content describing their role in helping patients quit tobacco use varied widely by program from 100 percent agreement among dental hygiene and pharmacy students to 14.6 percent of physical therapy students (p-value <0.001). When asked whether their program adequately prepared them to help smokers quit, agreement ranged from 100 percent among dental hygiene students to only 5.5 percent among physical therapy students (p-value <0.001). Almost 90 percent of dental hygiene students agreed that they were adequately trained to help ST users quit, but no other program had a percentage of agreement above 34 percent (p-value <0.001). Consistent and comprehensive multidisciplinary tobacco-related curricula could offer desirable standardization.

Accessibility of alcohol-related attitudes: a cross-lag panel model with young adults.

In the alcohol literature, most cognition research has focused on alcohol expectancies. Overall scores on alcohol expectancy questionnaires predict longitudinal changes in drinking behavior. However, the association between expectancy subscale scores and drinking behavior is inconsistent and modest. Attitudinal information may vary in accessibility (i.e., the ease or speed with which attitudinal information is evaluated), and more accessible (i.e., faster) attitudinal evaluations may predict heavier alcohol consumption. An alternative hypothesis arising from response competition theory is that heavy drinkers will show slow attitudinal evaluations, given that heavy drinkers frequently show mixed, inconsistent, or opposing alcohol-related beliefs. In this study we examined the degree to which speed of processing of alcohol-related evaluative judgments longitudinally predicted alcohol consumption in university students. Response latencies for alcohol- and non-alcohol-related attitudinal inquiries and measures of alcohol use were administered at two intervals 4 months apart. The key findings were that response times for tension reduction and cognitive impairment items at time 1 positively predicted alcohol consumption at time 2. These results held after we accounted for autocorrelation in drinking and individual variability in reactivity. For items relating to tension reduction, response times fit a response competition hypothesis better than the attitude accessibility hypothesis.

Persuasive communications to change actions: an analysis of behavioral and cognitive impact in HIV prevention.

This meta-analysis examined the validity of various theoretical assumptions about cognitive and behavioral change following a communication recommending condom use. The synthesis comprised 82 treatment and 29 control groups included in 46 longitudinal reports with measures of perceived severity and susceptibility, attitudes and expectancies, norms, perceptions of control, intentions, knowledge, behavioral skills, or condom use. Results indicated that across the sample of studies, communications taught recipients about facts related to HIV and also induced favorable attitudes and expectancies, greater control perceptions, and stronger intentions to use condoms in the future. Moreover, messages that presented attitudinal information and modeled behavioral skills led to increased condom use. Results are discussed in the context of theories of human behavior and change and in reference to HIV-prevention interventions.

Citizenship outside the Classroom

In the context of an increasingly pluralist and in some ways troubled society, work was undertaken to investigate the role of formal education and non-educational organisations in building good citizenship in girls and young women (9-19 years old). Different stages in the developmental process are identified, and the paper describes a number of ways in which experiential and attitudinal information was obtained from the range of respondents: these included a Citizen's Forum and quantitative omnibus research. Methodologies to involve the young people in focused and relevant debate during the one-day Forum were developed and are discussed.

Internet readiness and e-Business adoption of Canadian value-added wood producers

This study focuses on results of a facsimile survey sent to value-added wood producers across Canada on their levels of Internet readiness and electronic business (e-Business) adoption. In addition, attitudinal information was collected with respect to companies' willingness to use the Internet as a business tool to facilitate exchange along the supply chain. Findings indicate that, while the use of the Internet is relatively commonplace, the Canadian value-added wood products sector has yet to embrace high level e-Business tools on a wide scale. However, there is a willingness to do so and results clearly point to the fact that most manufacturers expect the Internet to become increasingly important in the context of day-to-day business applications. Key words: value-added wood products, Internet, e-Business, e-Commerce

The Effect of Careers Guidance for Employed Adults on Continuing Education: Assessing the Importance of Attitudinal Information

SummaryThe validity of the matching estimator in programme evaluation depends on the completeness of the set of variables that are used for matching. When an attitudinal variable is relevant for the decision about participation, but is either unmeasured or measured only after entry to the programme, estimates of effects may be biased or difficult to interpret. This issue was investigated with data from an evaluation study of careers guidance for employed adults which utilized the method of propensity score matching. Job satisfaction, measured shortly after entry to the programme, was found to be strongly associated with participation but might itself have been influenced by the early experience of careers guidance. Estimates of the effects of guidance were considered both including and excluding the job satisfaction measure from the participation model. Data experiments with adjusted values of job satisfaction were also performed. The results illustrate that omitted attitudinal information poses a particular difficulty for the matching estimator.

A school-community partnership for at-risk students in Pennsylvania.

This four-year, school-community health improvement project addressed fragmentation and under-utilization of services of an at risk population in a county in central Pennsylvania. A population profile was developed that included demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral information as well as information related to liabilities and assets that affect resiliency and decrease or increase the likelihood of academic success. The profile was used in the planning and implementation of risk-reduction strategies that promote a healthy family and, in turn, a healthy community. More than 50 local, state, and national organizations as well as individuals volunteered or provided services at each school. The project produced a 22% increase in parental involvement in school activities; a 15% increase in parental involvement in educational sessions; a 22% increase in volunteers within the school; and a 75% decrease in truancy.

Getting to know you: Psychographics' place in public relations research

This paper discusses the contribution psychographics can make to the public relations process. While marketers and advertisers rely on building up groups through individuals' consumer purchasing behaviour, public relations practitioners have traditionally assessed different groups' public opinion to provide guidance in developing communication. Psychographics offers practitioners a dimension between the individual and the group choices that takes into consideration the individuality of the marketing/advertising approach and the group mentality of the public opinion process. Correctly researched, psychographics can also add attitudinal and behavioural information to traditional demographic categories, allowing practitioners to tailor communication to match the attitudes and perceptions of their target publics. The key, of course, to making effective use of psychographics is carefully constructing the research to generate the genuine responses that accurately reflect target publics' feelings, motivations and values.

Changing treatment regimens for HIV infection: impact on referral patterns and training needs of family physicians.

New antiviral medications and laboratory testing have revolutionized the care of patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The development of complex treatment regimens has intensified debate about whether care should be restricted to experts in HIV care. Few studies detail how these new treatment regimens are affecting family physicians' desire to continue providing care or need for additional training. A questionnaire eliciting personal, training, and practice demographics and attitudinal information was distributed to family physicians attending the 1996 Scientific Assembly of the American Academy of Family Physicians who completed an HIV continuing education workshop. The questionnaires were completed by 202 family physicians from 48 states. More than 60 percent had received training or had practiced in states with a high rate of HIV, and 143 (70 percent) had cared for at least 1 HIV-infected patient in the previous 6 months. Ninety-five percent did not expect to curtail their provision of care and believed that family physicians should become more active in the care of HIV-infected patients. Medical journals were the most requested format for ongoing education in this area, with combination antiviral therapy and new staging laboratory tests the most requested topics. The recent changes in HIV care regimens did not appear to have a major impact on family physicians' desire to continue to provide care for HIV-infected patients. Professional societies responsible for certification and continuing education might be interested in additional surveys to validate these results among larger samples nationwide.

A model of health plan choice:: Inferring preferences and perceptions from a combination of revealed preference and attitudinal data

In this paper, we model the elderly's choice among health plans using data from a 1988 study of the Minneapolis–St. Paul Medicare health plan market. We show how attitudinal data can be combined with revealed preference data to provide more reliable estimates of consumers' preferences for and perceptions of the attributes of choice alternatives. We develop an extended heterogeneous logit model that incorporates information about attribute importance and allows for heterogeneity in tastes for observed and unobserved attributes. Our results indicate that the inclusion of attitudinal information produces a substantial improvement in model fit and in the substantive interpretation of estimated parameters.

The Military Language Tutor (MILT) Program: An Advanced Authoring System

The Military Language Tutor (MILT) is a language tutor authoring system developed by the U.S. Army Research Institute (ARI). MILT gives authors the ability to develop tutoring programs with various functional capabilities, including natural language processing (NLP), two-dimensional, animated, microworld simulation, performance-based, instructional branching, presentation of most conventional types of questions and feedback, etc. Currently it contains two relatively elaborate and usable examples of lessonware on which authors can build — one in Arabic and the other in Spanish. Based on the interest of the Special Operations forces (SOF), we developed a proof of principal version of MILT's two-dimensional Arabic microworld which uses speech rather than keyboard input to control an animated agent in solving an authored problem. The speech is recognized using a Dragon discrete speech recognizer utilizing a relatively small modern standard Arabic speech model. It is this speech-driven microworld that was the primary focus of an evaluation performed at Fort Campbell, KY. This version of the MILT microworld is controlled by 70 spoken Arabic sentences. The limitations of discrete speech recognition means that spontaneous speech recognition is impossible and the expected utterances must be presented for reading. As a result, three of the Arabic sentences are written at a time on the bottom of the microworld screen and students read aloud the sentence that they wish to see executed. When such a command is recognized and executed, the system automatically replaces the sentences with another set of three, and so forth. The evaluation produced significant, positive learning effects and useful attitudinal information from students. As a result, the discrete speech recognizer in MILT is being replaced by a continuous recognizer, and the two-dimensional microworld is being replaced by a three-dimensional one.

Attitude-Strength and Support of Recreation Management Strategies

Obtaining quality information about public attitudes toward recreation management issues requires information about the strength of attitudes. This study examined (a) the moderating effects of attitude-certainty and personal relevance on the relationship between attitude-extremity and prediction of support for management strategies and (b) public perceptions of arguments for management strategies. High levels of certainty and personal relevance allowed for better prediction of support for specific recreation management strategies from attitudes than low levels. Predictive validity was also related to the nature of beliefs about arguments for specific strategies. Implications suggest expanding the type of attitudinal information obtained in public surveys in order to improve the quality of attitudinal information and the effectiveness of communication campaigns.

Children's Attitudes Toward Violence on Television

Children's attitudes toward television violence were studied. A 47-item questionnaire collecting attitudinal and personal information was administered to 316 children aged 11 to 16 years. Cluster analysis was used to split the participants into two groups based on their attitudes toward television violence. A stepwise discriminant function analysis was performed to determine which personal characteristics would predict group membership. The only significant predictor of attitudes toward violence on television was the amount of television watched on school days (p < .05), but we also found that the impact of other predictor variables may have been mediated by this factor.

Stigmatization, discrimination and fear of AIDS in Greece: implications for health policy.

A prospective health-education research project about AIDS knowledge and attitudes towards AIDS was conducted in Athens and nine adjacent municipalities in west Attica, Greece. Socioeconomic and demographic data, AIDS knowledge, and attitudinal information were collected from 1552 respondents and analysed treating the attitudes of stigmatization, discrimination and fear towards AIDS as the dependent variable. Statistically significant correlations were found between each of the three attitudinal variables and the independent ones; specifically, age, place of residence, marital status and level of AIDS knowledge. Our working hypothesis--that the higher the level of AIDS knowledge, the lower the level of discrimination and stigmatization--was supported by our data. The relationship between AIDS knowledge and fear was less clear. Fear probably inhibits a rational approach to screening for HIV, and more empirical research is needed about fear and its interaction with stigmatizing and discriminatory attitudes and behaviours. Such research should be aimed at identifying population groups 'at risk' of expressing high levels of negative social attitudes about AIDS so that educational programmes can be appropriately designed.

Effects of Stereotypicality and Perceived Group Variability on the Use of Attitudinal Information in Impression Formation

In line with Susan Fiske and Steven Neuberg's continuum model of impression formation, it was found that when a social category was perceived as homogeneous on a stereotypic trait, a target's behavioral discrepancy from that stereotype elicited attention to and elaboration of individuating information. Individuating information consisted of the target person's attitude toward a stereotype-unrelated issue. Perceived variability was manipulated. Impressions of the stimulus person were related to participants'own attitude toward the issue, suggesting a similarity attraction effect. In the atypical-behavior/low-variability condition, this relationship was mediated by attitude-related thoughts. This suggests a cognitive-response-mediated similarity-attraction effect leading to relatively individuated impressions. All results were consistent across two different stimulus groups that were associated with complementary stereotypes.

The quality of attitudinal information regarding natural resource issues: The role of attitude‐strength, importance, and information

The decision‐making process in natural resource management has historically been guided by information from the biological and physical sciences. However, as the public becomes more knowledgeable about and active regarding natural resource issues, the integration of a multidisciplinary social science component into the natural resource decision‐making process becomes essential. One prominent method of social dimension inquiry is the assessment of public attitudes toward natural resource issues. A concern of natural resource managers and researchers, however, is the quality of the attitudinal information obtained. One way of assessing the quality of attitudinal information is to examine the predictive validity of attitudes, that is, their ability to predict behavior regarding natural resource issues. This study incorporates the strength of attitudes toward management strategies, the personal importance of a natural resource issue, and the availability of information about the issue into a model of the abil...

Types of work stress and implications for the role of general practitioners.

This study investigated a wide range of job-related characteristics which had the potential of acting as stressors for General Practitioners (GPs). Three hundred and four GPs completed a detailed questionnaire which sought audit information including practice workload factors, coping approaches and attitudinal information including sources of stress and the value of management training. Ten independent factors were identified as underpinning GP stress and using multi-variate analysis, it was shown that each of these factors is predicted by a separate and distinct set of variables. This finding suggests that it is inappropriate to simply talk about GP stress since it is a multi-dimensional concept. This finding has important implications for identifying potentially successful mechanisms of coping and support.

STRUCTURE AND PROCESSING OF THE PERCEIVED ATTITUDES OF OTHERS: BEYOND “LIBERAL” AND “CONSERVATIVE”

Button et al. (1993a) have recently proposed that a Liberal-Conservative dimension and a Traditional-Radical dimension underly people's perceptions and understanding of others' attitudes. The present study examined implications of this two-dimensional model for how people process attitudinal information. Subjects formed impressions of target persons whose attitudes varied inconsistency on one or both of the critical dimensions. On both dimensions, subjects took longer to assimilate inconsistent than consistent information. Compared to consistent attitudes, inconsistent ones were rated as fitting less well with subjects' overall impressions of the targets. In addition, comparisons of fit ratings given to particular attitude combinations provided support for Button's two-dimensional model and contradicted two alternative one-dimensional models. Possible connections between Button's model and those related to attitude activation, heuristic and systematic processing, and trait impressions are discussed.

Attitudes and Environmental Management

Attitude studies are useful for environmental managers because they provide (1) information about public support and beliefs, (2) information about goals necessary to set standards, and (3) information about the current and future behavior of relevant parties. Three cases are described to show how attitude studies can play a role in environmental management—helping to set user limits for float trips on the Colorado River, establish the feasibility of an earlier deer‐hunting season in northwestern Wisconsin, and develop a plan to clean up a polluted lake. Because of their utility, it is predicted that the demand for attitude studies as part of environmental management will increase. Information about specific attitudes and beliefs, based on actual experience, is most helpful, and experimental designs in field research can augment information from surveys. In spite of the attitudinal information, two of the projects described here were stopped by organized opposition of a particular interest group. Thus, simple user attitude studies are not sufficient, and a broader array of social science research on environmental management is needed to deal with such influences.