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ATTITUDE MEASUREMENT

Attitude

An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree

of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negativeviews of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as

the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an

object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative

attitudes toward the item in question.

Definitions of attitude

An attitude can be defined as a positive or negative evaluation of people,

objects, event, activities, ideas, or just about anything in your environment(Zimbardo et al., 1999) In the opinion of Bain (1927), an attitude is "the

relatively stable over behavior of a person which affects his status."

"Attitudes which are different to a group are thus social attitudes or `values'

in the Thomasonian sense. The attitude is the status-fixing behavior. This

differentiates it from habit and vegetative processes as such, and totally

ignores the hypothetical 'subjective states' which have formerly been

emphasized.

North (1932) has defined attitude as "the totality of those states that lead to

or point toward some particular activity of the organism. The attitude is,

therefore, the dynamic element in human behavior, the motive for activity."For Lumley (1928) an attitude is "a susceptibility to certain kinds of stimuli

and readiness to respond repeatedly in a given way—which are possible

toward our world and the parts of it which impinge upon us." Attitudes are

 judgments. They develop on the ABC model (affect, behavior, and cognition).[1] The affective response is an emotional response that expresses an

individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a

verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual.

 The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes

an individual's beliefs about the object.[citation needed ] Most attitudes are the result

of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.

Attitude formation

Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function

of experience. Tesser (1993) has argued that hereditary variables may affect

attitudes - but believes that they may do so indirectly. For example,

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consistency theories, which imply that we must be consistent in our beliefs

and values. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonance-

reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger which says Cognitive

dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions

(e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.” although

there are others, such as the balance theory which says “Balance Theory is

a motivational theory of attitude change,which conceptualizes the

consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance.

Attitude change:

Attitudes can be changed through persuasion and we should understand

attitude change as a response to communication. Experimental research into

the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include

1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the

person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is

intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily

persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been

studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes

thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded,

there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and

persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-

esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low

self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame andmood of the target also plays a role in this process.

2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are

expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or

attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found

to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about health and

believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more

easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper.

Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect

and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a

message came from a credible source disappeared after several

weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleepereffect is controversial. Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed

of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of 

a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its

source.

3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role

in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to

help change attitudes.

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Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive

evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the

individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and

arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude

change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the

source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that featurecelebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other

cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.

Emotion and attitude change

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude

change. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or

emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive

process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals

are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages.

Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and politicalcampaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitudes and

attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and conative

components. Attitudes are part of the brain’s associative networks, the

spider-like structures residing in long term memory that consist of affective

and cognitive nodes.

By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible,

though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. In

primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive

counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change.

Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of 

emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting

emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the

cognitive processes. How we feel about an outcome may override purely

cognitive rationales.

In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring

emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we cannot see into the

brain, various models and measurement tools have been constructed to

obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of 

physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate

measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increasedheart rate and increase body tension (Dillard, 1994). Other methods include

concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues.

The relationship between attitudes and behaviour Once we've established people's attitudes, can we then accurately predicthow they'll behave? Rosenberg & HovIand's (1960) three-components model

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(The ABC model: affective – behavioural – cognitive) implies that thebehavioural component will be highly correlated with the cognitive andaffective components. An early study which shows the inconsistency of attitudes and behaviour isthat of LaPiere (1934).

 LaPiere’s study

 Beginning in 1930 and for the next two years, LaPiere travelled aroundthe USA with a Chinese couple (a young student and his wife), expecting toencounter anti-Oriental attitudes which would make it difficult for them tofind accommodation. But in the course of 10,000 miles of travel, they werediscriminated against only once and there appeared to be no prejudice. Theywere given accommodation in 66 hotels, auto-camps and 'Tourist Homes' andrefused at only one. They were also served in 184 restaurants and ca16 andtreated with '... more than ordinary consideration ...'in 72 of them. 

However, when each of the 251 establishments visited was sent a letter sixmonths later asking: 'Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guestsin your establishment?', 91 per cent of the 128 which responded gave anemphatic 'No'. One establishment gave an unqualified 'Yes' and the rest said'Undecided: depends upon circumstances'.Influences on behaviour It's generally agreed that attitudes form only one determinant of behaviour.

 They represent predispositions to behave in particular ways, but how weactually act in a particular situation will depend on the immediateconsequences of our behaviour, how we think others will evaluate ouractions, and habitual ways of behaving in those kinds of situations. Inaddition, there may be specific situational factors influencing behaviour. Forexample, in the LaPiere study, the high quality of his Chinese friends' clothesand luggage and their politeness, together with the presence of LaPierehimself, may have made it more difficult to show overt prejudice. Thus,sometimes we experience a conflict of attitudes, and behaviour mayrepresent a compromise between them. Compatibility between attitudes and behaviour 

 The same attitude may be expressed in a variety of ways. For example,having a positive attitude towards the Labour Party doesn't necessarily meanthat you actually become a member, or that you attend public meetings. Butif you don't vote Labour in a general election, people may question yourattitude. In other words, an attitude should predict behaviour to some extent,even if this is extremely limited and specific. Indeed, Azjen & Fishbein (1977) argue that attitudes can predict behaviour,provided that both are assessed at the same level of generality. There needsto be a high degree of compatibility (or correspondence) between them. Theyargue that much of the earlier research (LaPiere's study included) suffered

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from either trying to predict specific behaviours from general attitudes, orvice versa, and this accounts for the generally low correlations. A study byDavidson and Jaccard tried to overcome this limitation. Attitudes can predict behaviour if you ask the right questions(Davidson & Jaccard, 1979) Davidson and Jaccard analysed

correlations between married women's attitudes towards birth control andtheir actual use of oral contraceptives during the two years following thestudy. When 'attitude towards birth control' was used as the attitude measure, thecorrelation was 0.08. Clearly, the correspondence here was very low. Butwhen 'attitudes towards oral contraceptives' were measured, the correlationrose to 0.32, and when 'attitudes towards using oral contraceptives' weremeasured, the correlation rose still further to 0.53. Finally, when 'attitudestowards using oral contraceptives during the next two years' was used, itrose still further, to 0.57. Clearly, in the last three cases, correspondence wasmuch higher.

 

According to Ajzen and Fishbein, every single instance of behaviour involvesfour specific elements: 

a specific actionperformed with respect to a given targetin a given contextat a given point in time.

 

According to the principle of compatibility, measures of attitude andbehaviour are compatible to the extent that the target, action, context andtime element are assessed at identical levels of generality or specificity(Ajzen, 1988). For example, a person's attitude towards a 'healthy lifestyle' only specifiesthe target, leaving the other three unspecified. A behavioural measure thatwould be compatible with this global attitude would have to aggregate a widerange of health behaviour across different contexts and times (Stroebe,2000). Elaborating the psychological processes underlying the principle of compatibility, Ajzen (1996) suggested that to: '... the extent that the beliefs salient at the time of attitude assessment arealso salient when plans are formulated or executed, strongattitude-behaviour correlations are expected'.

The reliability and consistency of behaviour 

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Many of the classic studies which failed to find an attitude-behaviourrelationship assessed just single instances of behaviour (Stroebe, 2000). Aswe noted earlier when discussing the LaPiere study, behaviour depends onmany factors in addition to the attitude. This makes a single instance of behaviour an unreliable indicator of an attitude Jonas et al., 1995). Only bysampling many instances of the behaviour will the influence of specific

factors 'cancel out'. This aggregation principle (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974) hasbeen demonstrated in a number of studies. According to Hogg & Vaughan (1995), what has emerged in the 1980s and1990s is a view that attitudes and overt behaviour aren't related in a simpleone-to-one fashion. In order to predict someone's behaviour, it must bepossible to account for the interaction between attitudes, beliefs andbehavioural intentions, as well as how all of these connect with the lateraction. One attempt to formalise these links is the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1970; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). This isdiscussed in relation to health behavior.

The strength of attitudes Most modern theories agree that attitudes are represented in memory, andthat an attitude's accessibility can exert a strong influence on behaviour(Fazio, 1986: see Chapter 17). By definition, strong attitudes exert moreinfluence over behaviour, because they can be automatically activated. Onefactor that seems to be important is direct experience. For example, Fazio &Zanna (1978) found that measures of students' attitudes towards psychologyexperiments were better predictors of their future participation if they'dalready taken part in several experiments than if they'd only read aboutthem. This can be explained by the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968),according to which the more contact we have with something or somebody,the more we like them.

So attitudes don't predict behaviour: what's the problem? Theso-called attitude-behaviour problem, that is, the failure to find a reliablerelationship between attitudes and behaviour, threatened to undermine theentire study of attitudes. As we saw in the Introduction and overview, attituderesearch was a cornerstone of social psychology in general, and socialcognition in particular, for much of their history (Stainton Rogers et al.,1995). But from the perspective of discursive psychology, there's no reason toexpect such a correlation: inconsistency between attitudes and behaviour iswhat we'd expect to find. Traditional, mainstream, attitude research is basedon the fallacy of individualism (see Chapter 3), according to which attitudes'belong' to individuals. This implies something fairly constant, and which isexpressed and reflected in behaviour. From a discursive perspective,attitudes are versions of the world that are constructed by people in thecourse of their interactions with others. 

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Discursive psychology is concerned with action, as distinct from cognition. Insaying or writing things, people are performing actions, whose nature can inrevealed through a detailed study of the discourse (e.g. recordings of everyday conversations, newspaper articles, TV programmes). Socialpsychologists have underestimated the centrality of conflict in social life; ananalysis of rhetoric highlights the point that people's versions of events, and

their own mental life, are part of ongoing arguments, debates and dialogues(Billig, 1987, 1992, in Potter, 1996). Compared with traditional attitude research, discursive psychology tries toshift the focus away from single, isolated, individuals towards interactionsbetween individuals and groups, a more relational or distributed focus(Potter,1996).

ATTITUDE MEASUREMENT SCALES The concept of measuring attitude is found in many areas including socialpsychology and the Social Sciences; they can be complex and difficult tomeasure and there are a number of different measuring instruments that

have been developed to assess attitude.

'Scaling is the science of determining measuring instruments for human judgment' (McIver 1981). One needs to make use of appropriate scalingmethods to aid in improving the accuracy of subjective estimation and voting

 procedures (Turoff & Hiltz 1997). Torgerson (1958) pointed out that scaling,as a science of measuring human judgment, is as fundamental as collectingdata on well-developed natural sciences. Nobody would refute the fact that all science advances by the development of its measurement instruments.Researchers are constantly attempting to obtain more effective scalingmethods that could be applied to the less well developed yet morecomplicated social sciences. Scaling models can be distinguished accordingto whether they are intended to scale persons, stimuli, or both (McIver 1981).For example, Likert scale is a subject-centered approach since only subjectsreceive scale scores. Thurstone scaling is considered a method to evaluatethe stimuli with respect to some designated attributes. It is the stimuli rather than the persons that are scaled (Togerson 1958). Guttman scaling is anapproach in which both subjects and stimuli can be assigned scale values(McIver 1981). (Li et al, 2001)

LIKERT SCALE

Likert Scale (Summated scale)

 This was developed by Rensis Likert in 1932. It requires the individuals tomake a decision on their level of agreement, generally on a five-point scale(ie. Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree) with a statement.

 The number beside each response becomes the value for that response andthe total score is obtained by adding the values for each response, hence thereason why they are also called 'summated scales' (the respondents score isfound by summing the number of responses). Dumas (1999) suggests, ' this

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is the most commonly used question format for assessing participants'opinions of usability'.

 Two examples of Likert Scales (figures 4 & 5):

figure 4

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 THURSTONE SCALE:

Thurstone Scales

 This is described by Thurstone & Chave (1929) as a method of equal-appearing intervals. Thurstone scalling is 'based on the law of comparative

 judgment' (Neuman, 2000). It requires the individual to either agree ordisagree with a large number of statements about an issue or object.

 Thurstone scales typically present the reader with a number of statements to

which they have to respond, usually by ticking a true/false box, oragree/disagree, i.e. a choice of two possible responses. Although one of thefirst scaling methods to be developed, the questionnaires are mostlygenerated by face to face interviews and rarely used in determining attitudemeasurement today, thus the example below (figure 1) is irrelevant to onlinelearners.

An example of a Thurstone Scale (figure1)

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ATTITUDE TOWARD WAR

An individual is asked to check those items whichrepresent his views.

1. A country cannot amount to much without a nationalhonor, and war is the only means of preserving it.2. When war is declared, we must enlist.3. Wars are justifiable only when waged in defense of weaker nations.4. Peace and war are both essential to progress.5. The most that we can hope to accomplish is the partialelimination of war.6. The disrespect for human life and rights involved in awar is a cause of crime waves.7. All nations should disarm immediately.

(Droba, 1930)

figure 1

Source: http://online.sfsu.edu/~psych200/unit8/84.htm

 

Advantages Disadvantages

Items are weighted or

valued rather thansubjects

More difficult to construct than aLikert scale

Easier to construct than aGuttman scale

No more reliable than a Likertscale

 Measures only agreement ordisagreement

In psychology, the Thurstone scale was the first formal technique for

measuring an attitude. It was developed by Louis Leon Thurstone in 1928, as

a means of measuring attitudes towards religion. It is made up of statementsabout a particular issue, and each statement has a numerical value indicating

how favorable or unfavorable it is judged to be. People check each of the

statements to which they agree, and a mean score is computed, indicating

their attitude.

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 The Thurstone attitude measurement procedure is generally more

consistent with empirical characteristics of disagree-agree responses, It is

constructed by the method of equal-appearing intervals, in which a large pool

of candidate statements about an attitude object, ranging from strongly

negative ( Abortion is never justified ) through neutral (There are arguments

both for and against abortion) to strongly positive ( Abortion is every woman's

right ), are sorted by a group of judges into eleven categories. They are

assumed to appear equally spaced on the attitude continuum, according to

how favorable the statements are towards the attitude object. Items that

yield the highest level of agreement among the judges as to their scale

position, and that collectively represent an adequate range of contents and

scale positions, are then selected for the final scale. Respondents to the scale

endorse just those items with which they agree, and an individual

respondent's score is calculated as the mean (or occasionally median) of the

items endorsed, such scores being assumed to lie on an interval scale of 

measurement. It is also called an equal-appearing interval scale.

 Thurstone was one of the first and most productive scaling theorists. He

actually invented three different methods for developing a unidimensional

scale: the method of equal-appearing intervals; the method of 

successive intervals; and, the method of paired comparisons. The three

methods differed in how the scale values for items were constructed, but in

all three cases, the resulting scale was rated the same way by respondents.

GUTTMAN SCALE

A type of attitude scale which is named after the US (later Israeli)

psychologist Louis H. Guttman (1916–87). The items of which can be

arranged in a hierarchical order such that agreement with any particular item

implies probable agreement with all those below it in the hierarchy, as would

apply to the following (non-attitudinal) items: I am over 5 feet tall; I am over 

5 feet 6 inches tall; I am over 6 feet tall; I am over 6 feet 6 inches tall. It is

constructed by the method of scalogram analysis in which a large pool of 

candidate statements about an attitude object (such as Euthanasia is morally 

wrong; Euthanasia should be legalized , and so on) are administered to a

group of respondents who mark just those items with which they agree, and

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from these responses a set of items is selected that can be arranged into a

hierarchy with as few errors (deviations from a perfect linear hierarchy) as

possible, a satisfactory Guttman scale having relatively few errors as indexed

by a reproducibility (Rep) of at least 0.90, implying that the scale is

unidimensional, measuring only one major attitude variable. The process of 

constructing a Guttman scale is called scalogram analysis. A simple example

of a Guttman scale is a social distance scale]

In statistical surveys conducted by means of structured interviews or

questionnaires, a subset of the survey items having binary (e.g., YES or NO)

answers forms a Guttman scale if they can be ranked in some order so that,

for a rational respondent, the response pattern can be captured by a single

index on that ordered scale. In other words, on a Guttman scale, items arearranged in an order so that an individual who agrees with a particular item

also agrees with items of lower rank-order. For example, a series of items

could be (1) "I am willing to be near ice cream"; (2) "I am willing to smell ice

cream"; (3) "I am willing to eat ice cream"; and (4) "I love to eat ice cream".

Agreement with any one item implies agreement with the lower-order items.

 The concept of Guttman scale likewise applies to series of items in other

kinds of tests, such as achievement tests, that have binary outcomes. For

example, a test of math achievement might order questions based on their

difficulty and instruct the examinee to begin in the middle. The assumption is

if the examinee can successfully answer items of that difficulty (e.g.,

summing two 3-digit numbers), s/he would be able to answer the earlier

questions (e.g., summing two 2-digit numbers). Some achievement tests are

organized in a Guttman scale to reduce the duration of the test.

By designing surveys and tests such that they contain Guttman scales,

researchers can simplify the analysis of the outcome of surveys, and increase

the robustness. Guttman scales also make it possible to detect and discard

randomized answer patterns, as may be given by uncooperative respondents.

 The Guttman scale is used mostly when researchers want to design short

questionnaires with good discriminating ability. The Guttman model works

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best for constructs that are hierarchical and highly structured such as social

distance, organizational hierarchies, and evolutionary stages.

Guttman scaling is also sometimes known as cumulative scaling or

scalogram analysis. The purpose of Guttman scaling is to establish a one-

dimensional continuum for a concept you wish to measure. What does that

mean? Essentially, we would like a set of items or statements so that a

respondent who agrees with any specific question in the list will also agree

with all previous questions. Put more formally, we would like to be able to

predict item responses perfectly knowing only the total score for the

respondent. For example, imagine a ten-item cumulative scale. If the

respondent scores a four, it should mean that he/she agreed with the first

four statements. If the respondent scores an eight, it should mean they

agreed with the first eight. The object is to find a set of items that perfectly

matches this pattern. In practice, we would seldom expect to find this

cumulative pattern perfectly. So, we use scalogram analysis to examine how

closely a set of items corresponds with this idea of cumulativeness.

Guttman developed this scale in the 1940s in order to determine if a

relationship existed within a group of items. The items are ordered from low

to high according to difficulty so that to approve or correctly answer the last

item implies approval or success of all prior ones (e.g. self-efficacy scale).

 The respondent selects an item that best applies. The list contains items that

are cumulative, so the respondant either agrees or disagrees, if he/she

agrees to one, he/she probably agrees to the previous statements. Arguably

this scale does not give enough variation of feelings and perceptions,

therefore the author suggests, this would not be appropriate for measuring

attitude of online learners.

An example of a Guttman Scale (figure 2):

 

Please indicate what you think about new information technology (IT) byticking ONE box to identify the statement that most closely matches youropinion (Wilson, 1997)

Agree

IT has no place in the office.

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IT needs experts to use it in the office.

IT can be used in the office by those with training.

I'd be happy to have someone use IT to do things for me in the office.

I'd be happy to use IT if I was trained.

I'd be happy to teach myself to use IT.

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