Semantic Differential Test Research Articles

Farmers' Perceptions and Responses to the Recent Cool Summer Hazard in the Shimokita Region, Aomori Prefecture

The purpose of this paper is to examine the farmers' perceptions and adjustments to the cool summer hazard damaging rice production. Natural hazard perception studies initiated in 1960s have been evaluated and discussed since the late 1970s. Although such case studies have recently been fewer, the main contemporary task is focussing on the adoption of human adjustments to hazard. Thus, we should probe the relationship between perception and adjustment.From this standpoint, the author attempts to grasp the farmers' images, describe the adjustments to the hazards, and investigate the relationship between these and the degree of damage-the yield of rice- as the result of the farmer's perception and adjustment.In the Shimokita Region, Aomori Prefecture, fasmers experienced a series of cool summer hazards from 1980 to 1983. Especially in 1980, they had almost no crops. The farmers in this region began to adopt various adjustments -the shift of cropping varieties, the establishment of nets for windbreaks, etc. But there were differences in the farmers adjustments and these differences were reflected in rice yields.It was found that the yield of rice in 1983 was connected to the adoption of adjustment. More possitive adoption related to more yield. The image which farmer had toward the hazard was obtained by the semantic differential method test carried out by questionnare. Analysed by factor analysis, four rotated factors that constitute the image are abstracted and identified as follows:Factor I Seriousness during cool weatherFactor II Fate of suffering hazard damage (controllability)Factor III Appearance of damageFactor VI Expectancy of occurenceThese four explained 59.1% of the variance. The structure of this image has something in common with the results of previous similar studies.Finally, the author also examined the relationship between this image and the degree of damage to yield in 1983. It seems that the degree of damage is closely connected to the dimension showing the‘fate’or‘controllability’. That is to say, farmers perceiving their fate pessimistically, namely anticipating damage in the future, attempted to adjust to the cool summer hazard. As a result, they had a good yield of rice and reduced the damage.

The perception of, and adjustment to, rockfall hazards along the Glamorgan Heritage Coast, Wales, United Kingdom

Along the Glamorgan Heritage Coast—a cliffed coastline—rockfalls are ubiquitous, and many users, for example, sunbathers at the cliff-base, cause considerable management problems. Attempts have been made to educate users as to the dangers of the hazard, predominantly through the use of hazard warning signs. Perception studies found that whilst awareness had been created amongst the majority of users, many still chose to take risks. Examination of individual difference characteristics found that no one type of ‘risk taking’ group was evident. Warning signs, although perceived by many, were poor in prompting changes in user behaviour. However, application of a semantic differential test found that perceived effectiveness was improved when combinations of words and symbols were employed.

Transition from student to physical therapist. Changes in perceptions of professional role and relationship between perceptions and job satisfaction.

A longitudinal study of 15 entry-level postbaccalaureate degree graduates was conducted to determine whether their perceptions of the professional role of the physical therapist and of self in that role changed after employment had begun and whether a relationship exists between these perceptions and job satisfaction. Data were collected by mail using a semantic differential test for measuring role perceptions and a questionnaire that included items related to job satisfaction and to demographic data. The return rate was 93%. At the time of data collection, the graduates had been employed for 12 to 18 months. The data on role perceptions were compared with data previously reported by Fincher Corb et al that had been collected on these same subjects when they entered the physical therapy education program and when they completed the program. Kendall's coefficient of concordance revealed significant differences (p less than .05) in three concepts relating to the professional role of the physical therapist and in one concept relating to self in that role. In each instance, the role perception score was lower after 12 to 18 months of employment. Job satisfaction scores were relatively high among the subjects. Spearman correlation coefficients calculated between job satisfaction and role perception scores revealed a positive and direct relationship between three role concepts and job satisfaction. Results of this study provide information about the professional socialization process in physical therapy.

Changes in students' perceptions of the professional role.

The purposes of this study were to determine whether students' perceptions of the role of the physical therapist and of themselves in that role change during a two-year entry-level postbaccalaureate degree program in physical therapy, when these changes occur, and the differences between students' perceptions and those of their faculty members. A semantic differential test was completed by 14 entry-level postbaccalaureate degree students five times during the two-year program. Sixteen faculty members completed the same test twice. Perceptions relating to five concepts of the professional role of the physical therapist and to five concepts relating to self in that role were assessed. Kendall's coefficient of concordance revealed no significant change in the students' perceptions of the role of the physical therapist, but it did reveal a significant change in one of the five concepts relating to their perceptions of themselves in that role (p less than .05). A Mann-Whitney U test revealed significant differences between the students' and faculty members' perceptions for 5 of the 10 concepts. Results of the study provide information about the professional socialization of physical therapy students.

Differential Effects of Three Teachers Over a Unit of Instruction

The purpose of this study was to describe the effects of three teachers on psychomotor, affective, and cognitive outcomes over a 15-lesson volleyball unit. Three intact middle school physical education classes were used. Pre- and posttests were administered for the overhead set, forearm pass, and serve psychomotor skills. A semantic differential test with four affective dimensions and a written test on the rules, strategies, and mechanics of volleyball were also administered pre- and posttest. Data on instructional characteristics were obtained using academic learning time (ALT-PE); observation system for content development (OSCD-PE), and a content analysis of lessons. The following were key aspects of the results: (a) Teachers differed in their approaches to the content of the unit more than in the characteristics of their instruction as determined through observational data; (b) teachers differed in respect to the psychomotor skills for which they were able to produce statistically significant student ...

The Effect of Arousal on Warm-up Decrement

Abstract The purposes of the study were to examine whether particular strategies would enhance affective arousal and if these arousal-inducing techniques would reduce or eliminiate warm-up decrement (WUD) on the performance of a sport skill. A total of 15 female gymnasts, age 9 to 14 years, performed a series of 10 handspring vaults. After a 20-minute period which included rest and the experimental treatment, three additional trials were given. The treatments, experienced by each of the subjects, included (1) rest (REST), (2) mental practice (MP), and (3) riding a bicycle ergometer (BIKE). To ascertain arousal level, subjects completed the children's arousal scale (CAS), a 9-item semantic differential test that measured positive and negative feelings, prior to the first trial and again immediately following the experimental treatments. Heart rate also was recorded at these times to determine a physiological basis of arousal. The results indicated that the BIKE condition eliminated WUD as compared to condi...

Attributions of the Term Feminist: A Factor Analytic Development of a Measuring Instrument

This study attempts to develop a measure of the attributions of the term feminist. Seven hundred and sixty-eight undergraduate students (361 males and 407 females) completed a 91-item semantic differential test relevant to the label feminist. Principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation produced five factors indicating that when the term feminist is used, attributions of General Evaluation, Behavioral Characteristics, Political Orientation, Sexual Preference, and Gender Classification are likely to be made. Factor analysis of split halves of the sample shows an internal replication and, consequently, a stability of the obtained factor structure. This study presents students' judgments on specific items defining these factors, thereby indicating the evaluative associations of the term.

Understanding others Kellyian theory, methodology and application

This article discusses Kelly's theory of personal constructs and its Repertory grid technique as means of revealing the nature of cultural differences and similarities. It shows how Kelly's theory relates to cognitive theory, implicit personality theory and subjective culture theory. According to Kelly, people and groups are best understood in terms of the ways they anticipate events. People are all psychologists since they employ constructs. These bases of discrimination are bipolar in nature and open to revision. A group's culture is summarized by its members' shared superordinate constructs. Kelly's Commonality Corollary explains that members of a group are similar because they use the same constructs to order events. Kelly's Sociality Corollary states that, in order to enter into a relationship with others, people need first to subsume the others' personal constructs. His custom-built Repertory grid elicits constructs by having a person decide how in a matrix other people, for example, are similar and different. In the rated grid form, each person or element is rated from most to least on the positive pole of each construct. Either principal components or cluster analysis or multidimensional scaling can reveal the interviewed person's superordinate dimensions of appraisal. As an emic technique, the grid is contrasted with the semantic differential and other fixed-format tests. A review of the personal construct literature shows that many individuals and cultural groups have been explained in their own terms. In this research, difference is construed as interesting and others are understood by construing their construction processes as a first step towards approval.

Farm safety attitudes and accident involvement

Many safety educators firmly believe that good safety attitudes are a must if people are to avoid accidents in the workplace and elsewhere. This idea has evolved mainly from the industrial safety movement and has been adopted in most fields of safety. However, this fundamental adage has never been tested in agriculture. A random sample of Pennsylvania farmers were asked their attitudes toward nationally recognized farm safety concepts. The Semantic Differential Attitude Test was the instrument used to collect the data. Four hundred and ninety-three respondents indicated they have about the same attitudes toward farm safety concepts regardless of their accident involvement and regardless of other variables studied. The results of this study suggest that the apparent high priority given to safety attitude development as a primary means of accident prevention should be re-examined.

Attitudes of medical students and residents toward cancer.

Attitudes toward cancer and heart disease were evaluated in 99 freshmen medical students, 76 seniors, and 66 residents using the Cancer Attitude Survey and a Semantic Differential test. The Survey revealed a rise in positive attitudes towards patients' inner resources to cope with serious illness and toward personal immortality and a rise in negative attitudes toward early diagnosis of cancer as students progressed in their training. The Semantic Differential test demonstrated more negative attitudes toward cancer than heart disease in all groups (freshman, seniors, and residents in medicine, psychiatry, or surgery). The seniors had the most positive attitudes toward cancer and freshman the least positive attitudes. The residents had more positive attitudes than the freshmen but less positive attitudes than the seniors. The residents in psychiatry had more positive attitudes than the residents in medicine, who had more positive attitudes than the residents in surgery.

The Measurement of the Effect of Preaching and Preaching Plus Small Group Dialogue in One Baptist Church

Eighty two members of a Southern Baptist Church participated in a study of the effects of preaching (P) and preaching supplemented by dialogue (PD). Five instruments were developed as measures: a knowledge test, a psuedo-behavior test, a subjective evaluative test of the subject as a worshipper, a subjective evaluation of the preacher, and a Semantic Differential test related by subject matter to the sermons. The Semantic Differential was the only instrument which showed consistent, significant (p < .05) effects.

Reliability and Factor Structure of the Guttentag and Bray Semantic Differential Test

Assessment of the Guttentag and Bray scales for measuring sex stereotypes raised serious questions about their reliability and validity. Results suggested oversimplification in prior assumptions of how boys and girls view sex-role characteristics.

Assessment of suicidal intention: the Scale for Suicide Ideation.

This article describes the rationale, development, and validation of the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI), a 19-item clinical research instrument designed to quantify and assess suicidal intention. The scale was found to have high internal consistency and moderately high correlations with clinical ratings of suicidal risk and self-administered measures of self-harm. Furthermore, it was sensitive to changes in levels of depression and hopelessness over time. Its construct validity was supported by two studies by different investigators testing the relationship between hopelessness, depression, and suicidal ideation and by a study demonstrating a significant relationship between high level of suicidal ideation and dichotomous attitudes about life and related concepts on a semantic differential test. Factor analysis yielded three meaningful factors: active suicidal desire, specific plans for suicide, and passive suicidal desire.

A CROSS‐CULTURAL STUDY OF SYMBOLIC MEANING–DEVELOPMENTAL ASPECTS1

Twenty three Israeli kindergarteners and sixteen Israeli college students were tested on a variant of the Semantic Differential Test developed by Guiora (1976) to test the hypothesis that young Israeli children, like adults, are not influenced by the prevalence of grammatical gender in the language but ascribe sexual meanings to the test words based on their assumed connotative values.The results bore out the original hypothesis, suggesting that whatever the cognitive processes are that underlie the development of the capacity to resolve seemingly conflicting information in favor of the more salient feature, e.g. meaning, they seem to be in place by the time the child reaches five years of age.

A Pair of Instruments for Measuring Student Attitudes Toward Bearers of the Target Culture

ABSTRACT An attitude has three aspects: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Two original instruments are presented: a modified Bogardus Social Distance Scale measures the behavioral aspect; factor I of a semantic differential test measures the affective aspect, while factors II and III measure the cognitive. Because correlations between the Bogardus and the semantic differential factors are not strong, a combination of both tests seems necessary in order to measure all three aspects. After a description of how the instruments were developed, suggestions are given for administering and for scoring them, both by hand and by machine.

Use of case studies to support an electrical engineering laboratory course

The paper describes an evaluation exercise in the use of short case studies to motivate students towards laboratory work. The evaluation made use of semantic-differential tests and attitude scales to monitor changes in students' attitudes. It is shown that short case studies, based on industrial problems, can have a significant effect in improving student motivation towards an undergraduate course.

Selected Factors Associated with Professional Attitude of Baccalaureate Nursing Students

To examine the association between professional attitude and selected situational and demographic factors of baccalaureate nursing students, 157 female students from an upper division major who had not had other college or nursing education answered a questionnaire which incorporated Osgood et al.'s Semantic Differential Test, Hogan's Professional Attitude Test, and an adaptation of the Dawson et al. instructor-leader behaviors. Eight hypotheses were tested. Professional attitude was found to be highest for students 24 to 26 years of age, who saw nursing as highly positive and highly active, had most formal and informal nursing experience, and perceived teachers as taking strong positions on their beliefs and relating to them with high consideration throughout their program and with low structuring when they were seniors. Professional attitude of students was not associated significantly with potency attributed to nursing, career choice, parents' level of education, or placement in sibling group.

Attitudinal changes in medical students taking a course in human values.

A semantic differential test was used to find out whether a course in human values in medicine produced changes in the attitudes of students who took the course as compared with the attitudes of those who did not. The results showed that students taking the course retained certain positive values as compared with the student group not taking the course, which showed only negative shifts in values. Possible reasons for these changes are discussed.

The development of a semantic differential test of teachers' attitudes toward teaching elementary school science

The development of a semantic differential test of teachers' attitudes toward teaching elementary school science

The Effects of Student-Pupil Interaction

A group of students on a post-graduate teacher training course took part in a Reluctant Learner Project. On one afternoon a week for a term, each student took a small group of comprehensive school pupils from a low stream class out of school and engaged in mutually agreed activities. A Semantic Differential test was administered before and after the Project to the College students taking part and to a control group of other students. No significant differences between the Project and Control groups existed on the Pre-Test. Various differences emerged between the Pre- and Post-Tests, and between the Project and Control groups on the Post-Test. These included: (1) The Project group showed a significant decrease in their evaluation of self and of the education system but a significant increase in their evaluation of low stream pupils. (2) Both groups showed a significant decrease in their evaluation of the college course, but this was significantly less in the case of Project students.