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Attitude Measurement
An attitude is an evaluation of an object (person, place, or thing) along a dimension ranging from favorable to unfavorable (Weiss, 2002). As such, an attitude has both affective (emotional) and cognitive aspects. Because they are internal states of people, attitudes can best be assessed via self-reports with quantitative psychological scales that can have several different formats (Judd, Smith, & Kidder, 1991).
Thurstone Scale
A Thurstone scale (Thurstone & Chave, 1929) consists of a list of items varying in favorability toward the attitude object. The underlying idea is that an individual will agree with only those items that are close in favorability to where his or her attitude lies. For example, Spector, Van Katwyk, Brannick, and Chen (1997) created a scale of job attitudes that had items that ranged from extreme negative (e.g., I hate my job) to extreme positive (e.g., Myjob is the most enjoyable part of my life), with more moderate positive (e.g., I enjoy my job) and negative items (e.g., I don't really like my job very much) in between.
| Table 1 Example of a Semantic Differential | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Supreme Court of the United States | ||||||||
| Good | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | Bad |
| Fair | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | Unfair |
| Weak | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | Strong |
| Passive | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | Active |
| Happy | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | Unhappy |
| Unimportant | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | Important |
A Thurstone scale is developed by first writing a number of items that are given to a panel of judges to sort into categories that vary from extremely unfavorable to extremely favorable. The categories are numbered, and the mean score across the judges is computed. To use the scale, respondents are asked to read the items presented in a random order and indicate for each whether they agree or not. The attitude score is the mean scale value of the items the individual endorsed.
Likert (Summated Rating) Scale
The LIKERT or SUMMATED RATING SCALE (Likert, 1932) consists of a series of statements that are either favorable or unfavorable about the attitude object. Respondents are given multiple response choices that vary along a continuum, usually agree to disagree, and they are asked to indicate their extent of agreement with each one. The scale is designed on the assumption that the favorable and unfavorable items are mirror images of one another, so that an individual who tends to agree with one set of items will disagree with the other. This is in contrast to the assumption of the Thurstone scale that people agree only with items that are close in favorability or unfavorability to their own attitude position. Spector et al. (1997) demonstrated that the Likert scale assumption is not always correct, and this can produce artifactual results when such items are factor analyzed.
The Likert scale has become the most popular for the assessment of attitudes, undoubtedly for two major reasons. First, it is relatively easy to develop (see LIKERT SCALE for the procedure), requiring no initial scaling study to get judges' ratings of the items. Second, this approach has been shown to yield reliable scales that are useful for assessing attitudes.
Semantic Differential
The SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL SCALE was developed by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957) to assess different aspects of attitude toward an object. The stem for a semantic differential is the name or description of the attitude object (e.g., Supreme Court of the United States). A series of bipolar adjectives is provided with a series of response choices in between. The respondent is asked to check the choice that best reflects his or her feeling, where the nearer the choice is to the adjective, the stronger the person endorses it (see Table 1).
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