Attitudinal Measurement Research Articles

The relevance of problems encountered in attitudinal research: a personal perspective.

The narrative gives an overview of problems encountered in conducting attitudinal research which include: difficulties with sampling procedures, attitudinal measurement, and attitudinal biases. Implications for researchers include: the need to address the attitudinal biases of each individual involved in the research and the need to develop valid and acceptable attitudinal assessment instruments.

How to: Plan An Assessment of Student Attitudes

This paper outlines a planning process for teachers to follow when designing an assessment of student attitudes. The guidelines presented are drawn from the literature on attitudinal measurement and from the authors' instructional experience. They are stated in terms which are general enough to encompass attitudinal measurement in a wide range of instructional settings.

Environment and Quality of Life: Attitudinal Measurement and Analysis

Public concern for the environment and quality of life is increasing. The present study surveyed the attitudes toward pollution and quality of life of a sample (130 men and 153 women) from a California city whose environment is highly desirable. People expressed concern for the environment but were not willing to pay for conservation with higher taxes. Men and women differed in the extent of agreement with some of the attitudes surveyed.

An Investigation of the Semantic Differential as an Instrument of Attitudinal Measurement.

Responses to a series of experimental semantic differential scales were obtained from a sample of 215 students representing nine college classes. The responses were factor analyzed and the factor structures were compared across classes. Factors accounting for the largest proportion of variance in most cases were found to be reasonably congruent across the sampled classes. Some theoretical views regarding the nature and significance of the concepts and scales are presented.

Change in Attitudes Toward Other Nations as a Function of the Type of International Contact

The hypothesis that cross-national contact leads to enhancement of attitude towards the countries visited was tested by controlling for two problems in earlier studies: (a) the confusion between genuine and superficial contact, and (b) the failure to specify the dimensions of contact and of attitudinal measurement. 35 Ss in two groups were given questionnaires before visiting Europe to work or travel (Time 1), on the return plane (Time 2), and after being home a period equivalent to the time abroad (Time 3). 38 control Ss in two groups were also tested at Time 3. At Time 2 the travel group was significantly more positive than before on all measured attitudinal dimensions, including those with which they had little or no contact. Relative to the travel group, the work group experienced more negative outcomes and indicated significant negative attitude change towards the countries worked in. The results were

Attitude Toward Cheating and Opportunistic Behavior

The problem was to Investigate attitude" toward cheating and the incidence of opportunistic cheating behavior in samples of undergraduate and graduate college student". Attitudes were assessed through the administration of Anderson’s attitudinal measurement instrument. Opportunistic cheating was observed through the utilization of contrived situations applied under two different levels of stress. Findings suggest that (a) attitudes toward cheating as measured by Anderson's scale do not appear to reflect the actual behavior of the respondents, and (b) In a given situation, regardless of the presence or absence of stress, approximately one-third of a college class will cheat opportunistically if the climate is an advantageous one.

Fascist Attitudes of K. S. T. C. Students at Emporia

Several recent studies dealing with reactions to labeled and unlabeled attitudes have brought certain aspects of attitudinal measurement more clearly into the open. Stagner (5) found that subjects may tend to reject items labeled fascist, yet may accept fascist principles, provided they are not labeled as such. The same conclusion was reached by Katz and Cantril (3) in their studies of students' attitudes toward and communism. Menefee (4), in his study of the effect of stereotyped words on political judgments, also found that the labeling of a statement with such a term as fascism would cause many students who had previously accepted it to now reject the same statement. Hartmann (2) also noted this same tendency. These studies seem to indicate that reactions to labels which operate as stereotypes and reactions to principles which the labels subsume are not one and the same. While the importance of knowing a subject's reaction to a labeled statement cannot be denied, the true attitude can be judged most accurately by measuring reactions to unlabeled statements of opinion. However, the true attitude cannot be measured by merely removing the label, as the item itself may reveal the objective of the investigator. This difficulty was partially surmounted by Stagner (5) in the construction of his attitude scale, by applying the principle of disguised measurement. His attitude scale was so skillfully constructed that the attitudes being measured were not disclosed to the subject. Stagner's scale, however, did not include the wider aspects of fascist ideology concerning such things as birth control, education, status of women, status of religion, etc. It dealt primarily with militarism, nationalism, contempt for lower classes, and opposition to labor unions. To remedy this defect and thus broaden the ideological concepts of covered by Stagner's scale, Edwards (1) constructed a more comprehensive scale of unlabeled fascist attitudes. The statements used were selected from a variety of sources, including first of all Stagner's study, and secondly, information from the writings of Childs, Mann, and Kolnai. Edwards' revised scale is the one used in the present study of fascist attitudes of The Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia students. The purpose of the present study was to measure the degree of acceptance of fascist principles by students of The Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia by means of an opinionnaire.