Rotter's Scale Research Articles

EFFECTIVENESS OF FILLER ITEMS IN DISGUISING SCALE PURPOSE

Subjects (n = 246) were asked to identify the trait(s) measured by Rotter's Interpersonal Trust Scale with and without filler items, either by responding freely or by circling traits listed on a sheet. Half the subjects were informed prior to filling out the questionnaire that their task was to identify the traits being measured by the questionnaire; the remaining half of the subjects were informed of their task after they completed the questionnaire. Very few subjects were able to identify correctly the trait being measured by Rotter's scale regardless of the experimental condition. Most subjects named multiple traits. It was concluded that the use of filler items per se was not the key factor in disguising the true purpose of Rotter's test; rather item wording may have produced multiple interpretations.

No shift in locus of control among women during the 1970s.

Contrary to reports published previously in this journal (Doherty, 1983; Doherty & Baldwin, 1985), there is no evidence of a shift in locus of control among U.S. women during the 1970s-at least not as revealed by responses of female Ss in 2 samples from the National Longitudinal Survey to a battery of Rotter scale items administered on 3 occasions during that decade

Sex Differences in Perceived Locus of Control

The study attempts to replicate the findings of previous research concerning sex differences in perceived locus of control by collecting and analysing the responses to the Rotter scale of 87 males and 60 females undergraduates.

A Measure of the Trust Beliefs of Elderly Individuals

Rotter's trust scale was modified for use as a measure of trust beliefs of elderly individuals. Analyses of 140 elderly individuals' responses on the scale yielded support for its internal consistency, reliability and validity. As evidence for the latter, the scale was correlated with peer sociometric ratings of trusting. Factor analyses revealed that the trust scale was composed of four factors: 1) dependability of social-legal organizations; 2) fear of being cheated; 3) dependability of specific social groups to fulfill their promises; and 4) adherence to trustworthy ideals within society. A complex relationship was found between trust and income; income correlated positively with the total score and both the first and second trust factors, but negatively correlated with the third factor. This was attributed to the tendency of elderly individuals with low income to place their trust in specific groups rather than social-legal organizations, and to their fear of crime. A curvilinear shift with age was found in the first trust factor and was attributed to post-retirement experiences in middle-old age and a form of generativity in very old age.

A scale for measuring externality-internality

The paper studies the validity and reliability of a new scale for measuring internality-externality. The standard norms for the number of students and senior pupils are suggested. On the basis of the data obtained during the test of 1, 181 subjects seven grades of internality externality have been established: (1) extremely external personality, (2) highly external personality, (3) external personality, (4) external-internal personality, (5) internal personality, (6) highly internal personality, (7) extremely internal personality. The test was repeated a month later after the first testing (n= 100). The scale proved to be reliable for measuring internality-externality (r=0.75, p<0.001). The validity of the scale has been confirmed by its correlation with other methods for the examination of internality-externality (J. Rotter scale, IPC, Subjective Control Level Test, Erewin Shapiro Scale), as well as the analysis of the structure of the scale. The data obtained show that the scale is valid for measuring general internality-externality, whereas the subscale of the attribution of interpersonal relations is not valid.

Establishing the Validity of an Abbreviated Locus of Control Scale: Is a Brief Levenson's Scale Any Better?

Application of a brief locus of control scale suggested by Lumpkin in 1985 led John, et al. to question its validity and reliability and suggest an abbreviated version of Levenson's 1974 scale may perform better. In this paper is a summary of an application of such a scale. The brief Levenson's scale did not perform as well as the brief Rotter's scale and so is not recommended as an alternative.

Validation of a New Test of Locus of Control: The Internal Control Index

A new locus of control test, the Internal Control Index (ICI), was examined. 259 subjects completed the ICI, the Rotter Internal-External Scale of locus of control, the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Eysenck Personality Inventory, and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Both locus of control tests showed that internals demonstrated less depression, anxiety, and neuroticism, and more self-esteem than externals. Neither locus of control test correlated with the extroversion measure. Based partly on item analyses, it was suggested that the ICI was a better measure of locus of control than the Rotter scale.

Further Exploration of the Relationship between Locus of Control and Social Desirability

Rocter (1966) has reported correlations between the Internality-Externality (I-E) dimensions of his Locus of Control scale and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale that range from -.07 to -.35. Cone (1971) reported a series of significant correlations ranging from -.29 to -.70 using the Edwards (1957) Social Desirability scale. Phares (1976) suggested such higher correlations occur in situations in which subjects perceive it to be to their advanrage to be seen in a socially desirable light. In the present smdy 224 (141 female and 83 male) students in introductory psychology routinely completed the Rotter's and Edwards's scales for which they received partial course credit. Subjects were primarily of rural middle-class background. They were assured their responses would be anonymous. The Pearson correlation between these scores was -.408, which suggests that the internality dimension of Rotter's scale is associated with social desirability (Rotter's M = 9.7, SD = 3.7; Edwards's M = 27.4, SD = 5.4). These data do not support Phnres's (1976) hyporhesis that positive correlations between Rotter's scale and social desirability are based on reinforcements to look good in the testing condition and suggest st least two alternatives: (a) Rotter's scale may not be very robust as it is confounded with a socially desirable response set or (b) a tendency to respond in a socially desirable manner may be a personalicy trait that covaries with general locus of concrol rather than simply a response set (Paulhus, 1984). The fact that scores on Rotcer's scale correlate higher with scores from Edwards's scale than the Marlowe-Crowne scale supports Paulhus's (1984) contention that social desirability is composed of che factors of self-deception and impression management. It appears that Edwards's scale measures the former factor (Paulhus, 1984).

The Multidimensionality of the Rotter I-E Scale and its Higher-order Structure: An Application of Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Rotter (1966, 1975) concluded that responses to his Internal-External (I-E) scale were unidimensional, or at least that one general factor explained most of the variance in the total score. The purpose of the present investigation is to examine the factorial structure of the original Rotter scale. A review of 20 published factor analyses indicated that the scale is not unidimensional, that not even two or three factors may be able to adequately explain responses to the scale, and that six distinguishable factors have been identified. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a five-factor model provided an adequate fit to data from the present investigation, but that alternative models with fewer factors or a simpler structure did not fit the data as well. However, a single higher-order factor was able to explain much of the variance in the lower-order factors and also provided a reasonable fit to the data. Hence, while there is strong evidence against the unidimensionality of the Rotter scale, the findings suggest that the first-order factors do define a single higher-order construct that may represent the generalized IE construct that Rotter originally hypothesized. Nevertheless, the continued reliance of locus of control research on the Rotter scale and on global measures of the construct may be counterproductive.

The relation between the locus of control construct and involvement in traffic accidents.

We investigated the relation between the Rotter (1966) locus of control concept and involvement in automobile accidents. Subjects were 184 college students who completed a survey measuring accident involvement, the Rotter scale, and scales featuring beliefs and behaviors in traffic situations that would be expected from internally oriented persons. No significant relation was found between the Rotter scale and traffic accidents. Accident involvement was best explained by internal beliefs about accident control, and the reported number of near-miss accidents per week. A path diagram relating survey variables is included.

Measuring locus of control in a hospital setting.

A 6-item health locus-of-control scale was freely adapted from the well known Rotter scale of perceived locus of control to differentiate between individuals who believe that even in a hospital setting they exercise some control over decisions affecting their health and those who look for medical caregivers, doctors, nurses, and technicians to assume external control. Test-retest reliability of the measure developed was 0.81, as obtained from 26 hospital personnel. It was hypothesized that individuals higher in hospital status would be more internally oriented on the measure, i.e., physicians and nurses, than individuals lower in status, such as patients. Confirmation of the hypothesis lent construct validity to the measure and opened the way for its use and further development.

Specific versus Generalized Locus of Control Scales Related to Job Satisfaction

This study compared, in the area of job satisfaction, scores on Rotter's I-E scale and on a new internal-external locus of control scale designed specifically for the work context. The correlation of .39 with the Job Descriptive Index arrived at by using the specific scale is significantly higher than the correlation of —.16 obtained with the Rotter scale. Data suggest this new scale could be useful.

Attribution of Causality in Sport Events: Validation of the Wingate Sport Achivememt Responsibility Scale

Attribution of causality, based on Rotter's (1966) and Weiner's (1979) models, was investigated in a sport setting. The Wingate Sport Achievement Responsibility Scale (WSARS) was developed in order to examine attribution of causality separately for individual and team athletes after successful and unsuccessful events. The scale included feedback from the coach, audience, and teammates. Additional attributions were added in order to examine sport related properties of attributions. In order to examine the distinction between sport-specific attributions and general locus of control (LOG), 69 team athletes and 38 individual athletes were administered the Rotter I-E LOG Scale and the WSARS (Tenenbaum & Weingarten, 1983). Both Rotter's Scale and the WSARS were found to be reliable and valid scales through the probabilistic Rasch Model. Correlational analysis of both scales showed that attribution of causality in team and individual sports were positively related but produced low correlations, which suggests that sport attribution should be examined separately from general LOG. In addition, successful events should be examined separately from unsuccessful events and a distinction should be made between individual and team athletes.

A scale to measure locus of control of behaviour.

Many behaviour, psychotherapy and healthy life-style programmes require subjects to take responsibility for the control of the old unwanted behaviours or to be responsible for maintaining new desired behaviours after therapy has ended. A scale to measure the locus of control of behaviour would be valuable if it could predict persons likely to relapse following apparently successful therapy. A 17-item Likert-type scale to measure this construct was developed and shown to have satisfactory internal reliability, to be test-retest reliable in the absence of treatment, to be independent of age, sex and social desirability, and to distinguish clinical disorder from normal non-clinical subjects. Furthermore, change towards internality (a reduced LCB score) during therapy was shown to predict maintenance or, alternatively, change towards externality (an increase or no change in the LCB score) was shown to predict relapse 10 months later in treated stutterers. The scale was shown to be related to the personal control factor of the Rotter I-E scale but to be more powerful a predictor of relapse than this personal control subscale or the full Rotter scale.

Reciprocal effects between locus of control and job attributes

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the reciprocal relationships between locus of control and job attributes of a representative sample of 1383 employees in a large Australian city. It was predicted that employees with an internal locus of control would attain jobs higher on skill-utilization, influence and income than those attained by employees with an external locus of control. It was also predicted that jobs involving high skill-utlization, influence and income would induce greater internal control beliefs than those low on skill-utilization, influence and income. Locus of control was measured using Rotter's scale (Rotter, 1966). Reciprocal causation was assessed using two-stage least squares analysis. For the total sample, it was found that locus of control and job attributes were reciprocally determined. However, locus of control was not related to influence when skill-utilization and income were controlled. When the sample was split on the basis of gender and marital status, the predi...

Locus of control and decision to abort.

The relationship of locus of control to deciding on an abortion was investigated. Rotter's Scale was given to 118 women immediately prior to abortion, 2 wk., and 3 mo. following the abortion. Subjects' locus of control scores were compared across the three times, and the abortion group's pretest scores were compared with those of a nonpregnant control group. As hypothesized, the aborting group scored significantly more internal than the general population but no differences in locus of control were found across the three times. The length of delay in deciding to abort an unwanted pregnancy following confirmation was also assessed. Women seeking first-trimester abortions were divided into internal and external groups on the Rotter Locus of Control Scale and the lengths of delay were compared. The hypothesis that external scorers would delay the decision longer than internal ones was confirmed. The results confirm characteristics of the locus of control construct and add information about personality characteristics of women undergoing abortion.

Relationship between grammatical errors on Rotter's scale and performance on educational tests for students suspected of having learning problems.

82 public school students who were referred for psychological evaluations because learning problems were suspected were administered the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank: High School Form and the protocols scored for errors in grammar. Grammatical errors were moderately correlated with performance on the reading and spelling subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test. Factor analyses suggested the existence of an independent factor for grammatical errors.

Beyond locus of control: Attribution of responsibility for positive and negative outcomes

Many locus of control measures fail to distinguish attributions for positive and negative outcomes even though these appear to be separate dimensions. Scales measuring the attribution of responsibility for positive and for negative outcomes are reported, together with data on their reliability and validity. Rotter's I‐E scale was found to correlate with responsibility for positive but not for negative outcomes. Responsibility for positive outcomes, together with the Rotter scale, predicted examination performance, while responsibility for negative outcomes correlated with self‐esteem and revealed consistent sex differences. The implications for locus of control research are discussed.

Individual Differences in Eyewitness Memory and Confidence Judgments.

The relationships between witness characteristics, event memory, and confidence judgments were investigated. A day after seeing two confederates (Cs) make an announcement, 170 Ss were given an unexpected memory test. They also completed the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and Rotter Scale. Neither of these test scores was related to memory accuracy, but female Ss were found to be more accurate than male Ss in their memory for the female C (but not for the male or for objects and actions). One significant correlation was obtained between the personality measures and confidence. Field-independents were better able to judge their own accuracy on an item by item basis, but this was true only for male Ss. In general, little support was found for the notion of predicting eyewitness performance on the basis of personality variables.

Australian norms and factorial confirmation of reid and ware's multidimensional internal-external scale

Australian norms are presented for a Canadian multidimensional version of Rotter's (1966) internal-external locus of control scale. Responses of 534 students from Tasmania and Queensland were factor analysed to reveal the same three dimensions as found in North-American samples. The results explained a greater percentage of variance than Australian studies which used the original instrument. It was suggested that the Canadian measure is superior to Rotter's scale and that its utilization in the Australian context is justified. Comparisons between Australian and Canadian findings revealed several features of interest as did within sample comparisons. However, speculations concerning cross-cultural and intrasocietal differences were considered premature in the absence of experimental confirmation and replication with contemporaneous North American norms.