Attitudinal Measures Research Articles

Themes of Self‐Regulation and Self‐Exploration in the Life Stories of Religious American Conservatives and Liberals

A sample of 128 highly religious (Christian) midlife American adults completed a series of attitudinal and personality trait measures and narrated 12 important autobiographical scenes in their life stories. Individuals high on self‐reported political conservatism tended to accentuate the theme of self‐regulation in their life stories, repeatedly describing important autobiographical scenes wherein they struggled to control, discipline, manage, restrain, protect, or preserve the self. By contrast, individuals high on political liberalism tended to emphasize the theme of self‐exploration, telling stories about expanding, discovering, articulating, or fulfilling the self. Demographics and dispositional traits (especially openness to experience) showed significant associations with conservatism‐liberalism, as well, but these variables did not mitigate the robust relationship between life‐narrative themes and political orientation. The results are discussed in terms of a broadened understanding of personality that conceives of dispositional traits and narrative identity as comprising distinct layers and complementary features of psychological individuality, both implicated in political lives.

The Simulation Olympics: a resuscitation-based simulation competition as an educational intervention

The Department of Emergency Medicine at Queen's University developed, implemented, and evaluated an interprofessional simulation-based competition called the Simulation Olympics with the purpose of encouraging health care providers to practice resuscitation skills and foster strong team-based attitudes. Eleven teams (N = 45) participated in the competition. Teams completed three standardized resuscitation scenarios in a high-fidelity simulation laboratory with teams composed of nurses, respiratory therapists, and undergraduate and postgraduate medical trainees. Trained standardized actors and a dedicated technician were used for all scenarios. Judges evaluated team performance using standardized assessment tools. All participants (100%) completed an anonymous two-page questionnaire prior to the competition assessing baseline characteristics and evaluating participant attitudes, motivation, and barriers to participation. The majority of participants (71%) completed an evaluation form following the event focusing on highlights, barriers to participation, and desired future directions. Evaluations were uniformly positive in short-answer feedback and attitudinal scoring measures. To our knowledge, the Simulation Olympics competition is the first of its kind in Canada to be offered at an academic teaching hospital.

Violent Video Games, Delinquency, and Youth Violence

Violent video game playing is correlated with aggression, but its relation to antisocial behavior in correctional and juvenile justice samples is largely unknown. Based on a data from a sample of institutionalized juvenile delinquents, behavioral and attitudinal measures relating to violent video game playing were associated with a composite measure of delinquency and a more specific measure of violent delinquency after controlling for the effects of screen time, years playing video games, age, sex, race, delinquency history, and psychopathic personality traits. Violent video games are associated with antisociality even in a clinical sample, and these effects withstand the robust influences of multiple correlates of juvenile delinquency and youth violence most notably psychopathy.

The Use of Online Modules and the Effect on Student Outcomes in a High School Chemistry Class

The purpose of the study was to review the efficacy of online chemistry simulations in a high school chemistry class and provide discussion of the factors that may affect student learning. The sample consisted of 351 high school students exposed to online simulations. Researchers administered a pretest, intermediate test and posttest to measure chemistry content knowledge acquired during the use of online chemistry laboratory simulations. The authors also analyzed student journal entries as an attitudinal measure of chemistry during the simulation experience. The four analyses conducted were Repeated Time Measures Analysis of Variance, a three-way Analysis of Variance, Logistic Regression and Multiple Analysis of Variance. Each of these analyses provides for a slightly different aspect of factors regarding student attitudes and outcomes. Results indicate that there is a statistically significant main effect across grouping type (experimental versus control, p = 0.042, α = 0.05). Analysis of student journal entries suggests that attitudinal factors may affect student outcomes concerning the use of online supplemental instruction. Implications for this study show that the use of online simulations promotes increased understanding of chemistry content through open-ended and interactive questioning.

Predicting verdicts, adherence to judge's instructions, and assumptions about the disposition of the defendant in a case involving the insanity defense

296 college students and jury eligible adults completed attitudinal measures and read a case summary of a murder trial involving the insanity defense. The case summary included opening and closing arguments, testimony from expert witnesses, and judge's instructions. Although broader legal attitudes (the PJAQ) predicted verdicts, the Insanity Defense Attitudes-Revised scale provided incremental predictive validity. Attitudes related to the insanity defense also predicted adherence to judge's instructions, whereas more general legal biases predicted a juror's willingness to change their verdict after being provided with accurate information about the defendant's disposition following the verdict. Importantly, misconceptions concerning the insanity defense impacted verdicts and many jurors made decisions that failed to adhere to the judge's instructions, though the nullification tendency does appear to vary as a function of pretrial juror attitudes. Implications for instructing jurors in insanity defense cases will be discussed.

Understanding Men's Aggression in Bars: Development of the Beliefs and Attitudes toward Male Alcohol‐Related Aggression (BAMARA) Inventory

While several qualitative studies suggest that beliefs and attitudes are important in explaining men's alcohol-related aggression, no quantitative instrument measuring men's beliefs and attitudes about male alcohol-related aggression has been developed. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a theoretically based multidimensional inventory measuring Beliefs and Attitudes toward Male Alcohol-Related Aggression (BAMARA) consisting of 9 dimensions: (i) expected negative consequences; (ii) expected positive consequences; (iii) personal approval; (iv) perceived male peer approval; (v) perceived female peer approval; (vi) perceived normality; (vii) relaxed norms when drinking; (viii) alcohol as an excuse; and (ix) male honor/protection of masculinity. A random sample of 1,343 young adult male college and university students participated in an online survey. Item analyses using confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) and item-response theory (IRT) procedures were conducted to select a refined pool of items promoting high internal consistency and discriminant validity of the 9 scales. We evaluated the criterion validity of the 9 scales, the BAMARA total score (BAMARA-Total), and a short form of the inventory (BAMARA-SF) in terms of their association with experiences of barroom aggression and other theoretically linked constructs. CFA and IRT analyses resulted in a 53-item inventory consisting of the 9 scales with adequate model fit and good internal consistency indices. Criterion validity was demonstrated, with the BAMARA scales correlating well with reports of actual experiences of aggression in bars. BAMARA-Total and BAMARA-SF were found to be significantly associated with barroom aggression controlling for a number of important control variables. This new instrument is expected to have many important applications in the male aggression literature, with the full BAMARA being employed for the assessment of specific beliefs and attitudes and the BAMARA-SF used as a general attitudinal measure.

Facing Up to Aging: Mid-Life Women's Attitudes toward Cosmetic Procedures

Despite the fact that mid-life and older women are a major consumer group for cosmetic procedures (e.g., botox, face lifts), few studies have been done on their attitudes toward these procedures and their willingness to undergo them. The purpose of the present study was to gather information about the popularity of these procedures among a group of 57 mid-life American women, examine whether some personality and attitudinal measures might predict attitudes toward these procedures, and consider the ramifications of the data for the treatment of women in feminist therapy. About one third (38.5%) of our sample had had one or more cosmetic procedures, and 81% said that they would have a procedure if cost were not an issue. Positive attitudes toward cosmetic surgery and preoccupation with being over-weight best predicted women's interest in cosmetic procedures. The popularity of these procedures is discussed in light of the double standard of aging and age discrimination, weight as a “normative discontent,” and the ubiquity of advertisements for, and normalization of, these procedures in the popular media.

A comparative investigation of the BigCAT and Erickson S-24 measures of speech-associated attitude

The BigCAT and the Erickson S-24, self-report measures of communication attitude, were administered in a randomly determined order to 72 adults who stuttered (PWS) and 72 who did not (PWNS). The two groups of participants differed from each other to a statistically significant extent on both of these measures of speech-associated attitude, regardless of gender. However, the BigCAT showed a larger between-group difference and a greater effect size than was made apparent by the S-24. These findings, and the presence of a significant group by test interaction, suggest that the BigCAT is the more powerful of these two test procedures for discriminating the speech-associated attitude of PWS from that of PWNS. It follows from this that the BigCAT is likely a more useful attitudinal measure than the S-24 with respect to clinical decision making that relates to differential diagnostic assessment and the management of stuttering.Learning outcomes: The reader will be (1) describe the BigCAT, a communication attitude test for adults who do and do not stutter, (2) discuss comparative data on the BigCAT and the Erickson S-24, based on information on the discriminative power of these measures of speech-associated attitude, (3) recognize that gender does not significantly effect the results of either the BigCAT or the Erickson S-24.

Development, Psychometric Qualities, and Cross-Validation of the Leave No Trace Attitudinal Inventory and Measure (LNT AIM)

This article discusses the process undertaken to develop and validate the Leave No Trace (LNT) Attitudinal Inventory and Measure (LNT AIM), an instrument designed to measure attitudes regarding specific practices addressed by the LNT Principles for Responsible Recreation. We envision this tool being useful for determining the necessity for LNT educational programming or for evaluating existing LNT education efforts. A mailed questionnaire was used to collect data from overnight backcountry visitors who had recently visited one of two U.S. National Park Service Units during the summer, 2007. The final measurement model exhibited satisfactory psychometric fit properties across both samples and is largely consistent with the conceptual framework used to develop the measure.

Motivating Environmental Action in a Pluralistic Regulatory Environment: An Experimental Study of Framing, Crowding Out, and Institutional Effects in the Context of Recycling Policies

In designing a recycling policy, the regulator must choose among multiple instruments. Our study seeks to address the linkages between the choice of regulatory instruments and institutional frameworks, people's intrinsic motivation, and various attitudinal measures. We examined the behavioral repercussions of several instruments that are used widely in recycling regulation, using an experimental survey on a representative sample of the Israeli population (N = 1,800 participants). Our findings suggest that the design of recycling policies should be sensitive to the framing effects of varied regulatory instruments and to the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the desirability and efficacy of the law. In particular, we point out the potential regulatory advantage of using deposit schemes over other instruments and of using private organizations as regulatory agents. Drawing on these findings, we discuss the potential value of using differentiated regulatory policies to provide incentives for recycling in societies characterized by broad heterogeneity in levels of intrinsic motivation.

Australian psychologists' attitudes towards suicide and self‐harm

An exploratory study of 81 Australian psychologists' attitudes towards suicide and self‐harm was undertaken. Two attitudinal measures, one knowledge measure and demographic information, were used to assess the relationships between attitudes, knowledge, gender, age, years of professional experience, and previous experience with suicidal and self‐harming clients. Among this sample, attitudes towards suicide and self‐harm were generally positive and participants displayed high levels of knowledge of self‐harm. Age and years of experience were related to participants' attitudes, with younger psychologists reporting greater confidence in working with these clients and believing in the right of an individual to decide when to die. Future research is needed to determine the impact of psychologists' attitudes on their behaviour towards suicidal and self‐harming clients.

Consumer perspectives about weight management services in a community pharmacy setting in NSW, Australia

Obesity is a public health challenge faced worldwide. Community pharmacists may be well placed to manage Australia's obesity problem owing to their training, accessibility and trustworthiness. However, determining consumers' needs is vital to the development of any new services or the evaluation of existing services. To explore Australian consumers' perspectives regarding weight management services in the community pharmacy setting, including their past experiences and willingness to pay for a specific pharmacy-based service. An online cross-sectional consumer survey was distributed through a marketing research company. The survey instrument comprised open-ended and closed questions exploring consumers' experiences of and preferences for weight management services in pharmacy. It also included an attitudinal measure, the Consumer Attitude to Pharmacy Weight Management Services (CAPWMS) scale. A total of 403 consumers from New South Wales, Australia, completed the survey. The majority of respondents had previously not sought a pharmacist's advice regarding weight management. Those who had previously consulted a pharmacist were more willing to pay for and support pharmacy-based services in the future. Most consumers considered pharmacists' motivations to provide advice related to gaining profit from selling a product and expressed concerns about the perceived conflicts of interest. Participants also perceived pharmacists as lacking expertise and time. Although Australian consumers were willing to seek pharmacists' advice about weight management, they perceived several barriers to the provision of weight management services in community pharmacy. If barriers are addressed, community pharmacies could be a viable and accessible setting to manage obesity.

How to engage children in self‐administered dietary assessment programmes

Effectively assessing children's dietary intake is essential for understanding the complex relationships among dietary behaviours and obesity. Dietary assessment accuracy decreases when children are unable or unmotivated to complete accurate self-reports. Technology-based assessment instruments for children's self-report of diet can be enhanced in light of developments in media psychology and communication science. To motivate children to complete a dietary assessment, researchers could use animated, customisable agents; embed the assessment process into a video game; or add narratives to encourage self-reporting behaviour. To improve accuracy, the intake environment could be recreated virtually; training sessions could be interspersed to improve portion estimation; and implicit attitudinal measures could be incorporated as a control or to increase validity. Research is needed to evaluate possible methods of enhancing children's self-reporting motivation and accuracy. The main challenge remains how to engage children without biasing their reporting.

Dementia knowledge and attitudes of the general public in Northern Ireland: an analysis of national survey data

This paper provides an overview of the findings from the dementia module of the 2010 Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT) Survey: an annual survey recording public attitudes to major social policy issues. Northern Ireland, in line with many other developed countries, recently released a Dementia Strategy. The opportunity to explore the knowledge and attitudes of the general public to dementia at a national level in Northern Ireland is timely and valuable. This paper reports on an initial exploration of these attitudes, based on bivariate analysis across demographic groups. Data were analyzed using SPSS (Version 19). Descriptive and summary statistics were produced. A series of categorical bivariate relationships were tested (chi-square) and tests of association (Cramer's V) were reported. We discuss both knowledge-related findings and attitudinal findings. We found that the general public in Northern Ireland have a reasonably good level of knowledge about dementia. However, attitudinal measures indicate the stereotyping and infantilization of people with dementia. This NILT module provides a unique source of data on attitudes to, and knowledge of, dementia. A key strength is that it provides statistically representative data with national level coverage. This information can be used to target public health education policies more effectively and to inform delivery of health and social services. The success of the module leads us to believe that it stands as a blue-print for collecting information on dementia in other social surveys.

Back to and beyond Berry's basics: The conceptualization, operationalization and classification of acculturation

Berry (1990) distinguished four acculturation attitudes (integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization) arising from two acculturation questions (concerning cultural maintenance and cultural contact). This research examines the distributions of acculturation attitudes based on his original cultural maintenance–cultural contact conceptualization and on a later cultural maintenance–cultural adoption model. In line with the Relative Extended Acculturation Model it also compares the outcomes of real (self-reported behavioral) and ideal (attitudinal) assessments of acculturation. Two hundred and eighty-nine first generation immigrants in New Zealand participated in the study. In line with the hypotheses, integration occurred more frequently when derived from cultural contact than from cultural adoption and when acculturation was framed in attitudinal, rather than behavioral, terms. The findings point to the necessity of clearly defining the dimensions of acculturation, ensuring they are appropriately operationalized, and differentiating attitudinal and self-reported behavioral measures. The consequences of the operationalization of acculturation for its relationship to adaptation are also reported and discussed.

Consider the non-adopter: Developing a prediction model for the adoption of household-level broadband access

We explore the decision process for the household-level adoption of broadband Internet access. Our aim, of determining the barriers to household-level broadband adoption and how to best overcome those barriers, guides our analysis in an effort to better inform broadband policy development and implementation. We introduce and rely on data collected from 3101 New Jersey households under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's nationwide Broadband Technology Opportunity Program. Following MATH, the Model of Technology Adoption in Households, extended with a moderating control variable, we model the conditions under which a household is more or less likely to adopt household-level broadband Internet access. We specify an original two-step model that first estimates from demographic determinants a linear latent variable of the responding household's propensity to not adopt high-speed broadband Internet access, and then regresses that propensity variable on behavioral and attitudinal measures about broadband and computer use and familiarity. Analyzing those outcomes generates three empirical findings that help inform the efficient implementation of policies to establish universal broadband access: (1) demographically, household-level broadband adoption in New Jersey is colorblind: race and ethnicity, in and of themselves, do not predict household-level broadband adoption; (2) behaviorally, the strongest facilitator for household-level broadband adoption is computer use by the household decision-maker; and (3) structurally, the strongest barrier to such adoption is lack of resources. Decomposing and better understanding the phenomenon of non-adoption will help to inform planning efforts to maximize household-level broadband adoption.

Race/Ethnicity and Family Contact

Research from several disciplines has found that Latinos in the United States tend to score higher than other groups on measures of familialism. While most studies of Latino familialism use attitudinal measures rather than behavioral ones, I argue that examining behavioral measures of familialism can offer additional insights. This article develops a behavioral measure of familialism based on frequency of contact with family members and demonstrates this measure’s utility using 2002 General Social Survey (GSS) data. Indices were created representing frequency of contact with nuclear and extended family using individual familial categories (i.e., mother, sibling, cousin). Frequency of contact with the individual familial categories was also tested. Analysis of the indices found that Latinos maintained more frequent contact with nuclear and extended family members than did White non-Hispanics but not Black non-Hispanics. More detailed findings from the analyses of individual familial categories, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Chinese consumer ethnocentrism: A field experiment

ABSTRACTConsumer ethnocentrism presents barriers for internationalising organisations. In China, evidence of a resurgent nationalism partly fuelled by rapid economic growth portends a shift in consumption away from foreign towards domestic products. On the other hand, rising consumer demand for branded and luxury products cannot be fully met domestically. However, much of the available evidence on Chinese consumer ethnocentrism is anecdotal and is based on attitudinal surveys that, as accurate measures of actual purchasing behaviour, suffer from certain methodological issues. In response, we report an experiment that measures the ethnocentrism of 447 Chinese consumers as their incentive‐compatible choices between foreign and domestic products in a field setting. Our findings show little effect of foreign origin on subjects' choices that were only weakly related with attitudinal measures including the commonly used consumer ethnocentric tendencies scale (CETSCALE). Our results question the existence of ethnocentric consumer behaviour in China and the use of CETSCALE to gauge it generally. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Is there fire? Executive compensation and employee attitudes

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the relationship between CEO compensation and employee attitudes.Design/methodology/approachBased upon equity/organizational justice theories and the CEO compensation literature, hypotheses were developed which suggest that executive compensation and employee attitudes will be related. These hypotheses were tested by linking a large‐scale survey of employee attitudes to CEO compensation data for public companies based in the USA.FindingsEmployee attitudes appear to be related to some measures of CEO compensation, although sometimes the relationship that was found was negative and sometimes it was positive, but in all cases the effect size was quite small. Specifically, change in CEO salary was negatively related to evaluation of senior management and general satisfaction. However, change in total CEO compensation was positively related to evaluation of senior management and general satisfaction, while CEO bonus level was positively related to general satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations of this study include the inability to show a causal relationship, limited external validity, equations that explain only a small amount of variance and attitudinal measures that are single source. Future research which helps understand what employees know and why differences across organizations exist would be helpful.Practical implicationsFrom an employee attitude perspective, changing performance‐based components of CEO compensation (e.g. bonus) is better than changing CEO salary. However, if salary is going to be increased, a communication plan for employees should be developed.Originality/valueWhether executive compensation has an impact on employees' attitudes has not been explored previously.

Reducing Endorsement of Benevolent and Modern Sexist Beliefs

In two experiments, the present research identifies basic mechanisms for reducing endorsement of benevolent and modern sexist beliefs. Responses to attitudinal measures and a collective action measure on policy beliefs in Study 1 (N = 164) as well as to dating profiles in Study 1 and Study 2 (N = 159) support the hypothesis that endorsement of benevolent sexist beliefs can be reduced by providing information about its harmful consequences. Moreover, women and men become more aware of the full scope of gender discrimination and reduce their endorsement of modern sexist beliefs when they are provided with information about the harmful nature and pervasiveness of benevolent sexism. Theoretical implications regarding the linkage between benevolent and modern sexist beliefs and practical implications for reducing sexism are discussed.