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Read this article to learn about meaning and methods of measurement of attitudes of an individual.
Meaning of Attitude:
The doctrine of attitudes has come to occupy a very prominent place in the field of social science, and recently in the field of education also. It has “almost captured and refashioned the science of social psychology.” The term ‘attitude’ has been used in different senses by various authors. Lundberg has defined it as “the general set of the organism as a whole towards an object or situation which calls for adjustment”.
As such, an attitude implies a preparation or readiness for response. But it differs from other forms of readiness for response, like interests, in that it has a definite, specified object of reference. Attitude is an acquired characteristic of human personality, based on the experience of the individual in relation to an object or situation. It originates in an incomplete stage of adjustment of an organism to external conditions, and may become a permanent set of the organism.
It may change also with alteration in the needs and interests of the individual. The flexibility of attitudes makes them differ from other forms of readiness like instincts and reflexes, which are innate and bound rigidly to the stimulus. The form of readiness which characterizes attitude includes not only the neuromuscular set of an organism, but their psychological correlates as well. This subjective character is fully brought out in the definition of attitudes by Thurstone.
Attitudes denote “the sum total of a man’s inclinations and feelings, prejudices or bias, pre-conceived notions, ideas, fears, threats and convictions about any specific topic. Thus a man’s attitude about pacifism means all that he feels and thinks about peace and war. ”
There is an affective element in attitudes. An attitude provokes behaviour which is acquisitive or avertive, favourable or unfavorable, affirmative or negative, towards the object with which it is related. Allport describes this character of attitude as a “double polarity.” Thurstone recognises it when he defines an attitude as the “affect for or against a psychological object.”
An attitude has a directionality. Cattell even goes to the extreme of saying that it is “a vector definable by strength, direction, objection, situation and stimulus situation.” There is a difference of opinion on this point of motivational character of attitudes. According to some it simply directs the activity, while others hold that it motivates.
We accept that there are both types of attitudes. “One which is so organised and energised that it actually drives, and the other which merely directs. Both of these types are conditions of readiness for response; both are in a sense dynamic. For both enter into the determination of conduct. The first, however, is specifically motivational, the second is merely instrumental.”
An attitude is an observable set of the organism preparatory to, and indicative of, more complete adjustment. It is observable through symbolic behaviour. This symbolic behaviour may be, in terms of overt bodily postures; or in terms of inner intellectual and emotional changes, as symbolized mainly through language, kinesthetic and sub-vocal responses.
In short, an attitude is a form of readiness for response. It is both neural and mental, entirely subjective in nature. It is an acquired, flexible characteristic of human personality based on the experience of the individual in relation to an object or situation. It includes the needs and interests of the individual and derives its dynamic effect from them.
Allport’s definition of an attitude puts the above mentioned characteristics in a nutshell. An attitude is a “mental and neural state of readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.”
Methods of Measuring Attitudes:
Various methods have been developed for the purpose of measuring attitudes. These range from attempts at inferring a person’s attitude from biographies, case-histories, diaries, interviews, questionnaires and polls, to tests and scales, arbitrary and experimental, consisting of specific opinions to be accepted or rejected.
The simplest of direct verbal methods of measuring attitudes is the questionnaire for, consisting either of a list of statements to be accepted or rejected, or of questions to which degrees of agreement or disagreement are to be indicated, or of multiple choice responses representing widely varying attitudes. Droba prefers to use the term “method of absolute ranking” in place of the term ‘questionnaire’ which, according to him, has a vague meaning.
The Rating Scale:
There are various forms of rating scales. But the essence of all forms of rating devices is the same. That is, some particular psychological continuum is specified, such as, strength of belief or of persuasiveness, the vividness of an image, or such personal qualities as leadership and tactfulness; certain landmarks are supplied along this continuum to aid a judge in the evaluation of samples that can be placed on that continuum.
The guide posts may be in terms of descriptive phrases to which, numerical values are assigned, it is then a numerical rating scale or the scale of values method. The landmarks may be placed in terms of actual samples, for example, handwriting specimens that have been evaluated previously by some other psychometric methods; it then may be called a scale of standards or a standard scale.
Sometimes a straight horizontal line is drawn to represent the continuum in question, and descriptive phrases are attached at intervals along the line from one extreme to the other. The judge may check with pencil that point on the continuum where he believes the sample should fall. This type is called the graphic rating scale. Thurstone and Chave reported the use of the graphic self-rating scale in the measurement of attitudes towards church.
The advantage of this method is that it is simple and easily grasped. It requires less time to be administered and scored. The difficulty of this scale is the tendency of the subjects to over-estimate their desirable attitudes.
Case Method:
It is an essay type of description of an attitude, consisting of at least a paragraph. Historically, this is the oldest method. The drawback of this method is that it is not easily amenable to quantitative analysis.
Relative Ranking:
In this method the subject may be asked to rank a number of items in order of preference. Any stimulus that can be placed in serial order can be treated by this method. This method was used by Rogardus to measure social distance.
In short, there are three main methods of measuring attitudes:
(i) The method of paired comparisons,
(ii) The method of equal-appearing intervals, and
(iii) The Likert method.
Method of Paired Comparisons:
Suppose attitude towards certain nationalities is to be measured. Pairs of nationalities are taken and the subject is asked to tick one of the two, showing his preference. No nationality is to be repeated twice successively, or in any other rhythmical pattern, and each to be repeated an equal number of times on the right and left of the pair. And the subject is to choose one, even if it requires guesswork.
The calculation of scale values is based on the proportion of persons choosing one statement of attitude as against its alternative. This method has high reliability and validity, excepting the method of equal appearing intervals. Results of this method and that of equal appearing intervals are very similar, except that in paired comparisons irrelevance of items remains undetected.
Method of Equal Appearing Intervals:
This method was first developed by Dalbocaf for the measurement of sensory discrimination, but its application to the field of attitude measurement is the contribution of Thurstone, and the method has been connected with his name, and scales of this type are known as Thurstone scales.
The method consists in finding a scale which will show for a given person:
(i) The main position he occupies in the scale, and
(ii) The range of opinions he will accept.
The procedure of the method is as follows:
First, a number of statements, expressing various opinions on the subject are to be collected from several persons and literature to be searched for appropriate brief statements like:
(i) Military training should be compulsory and universal,
(ii) Every effort should be made to enlist man for military training,
(iii) We need to have facilities for military training open to all but should give freedom of choice,
(iv) We need have military training only when our safety is threatened,
(v) All military training should be abolished.
A list of 100 to 150 statements, covering all shades of opinions, from one end of the scale to another should be collected. It is sometimes necessary to give special attention to neutral statements. If a random collection of statements fail to produce enough neutral statement, there is some danger that the scale will split into two. The whole range of attitudes must be well- covered, so that one can tell by a preliminary inspection that there will be no overlapping in the rank orders of different readers throughout the scale.
Several criteria are to be followed in selecting the initial list of statements:
(i) The statements should be as brief as possible so as not to fatigue the subjects, who are asked to read the list,
(ii) The statement must be such as can be endorsed or rejected in accordance with their agreement or disagreement with the attitude of the subject,
(iii) The statement must express an attitude which can be endorsed or rejected, and should not be merely a statement of a fact,
(iv) Double-barreled statements are to be avoided, because of their ambiguity, except possibly as examples of neutrality when better neutral statements does not seem to be available,
(v) A fair majority of statements should really belong to the attitude variable, so the irrelevant statements can be eliminated.
When the statements are collected, each statement should be printed on a slip of paper, and selected judges are requested to sort the statements and place them in a logical order with extreme approval- at one end of the scale, and extreme disapproval at the other end. Thurstone asked his judges to place the statements in eleven piles. Probably the best way to begin is to ask the judges to divide the statements into nine piles, to put under pile no. 1, statements which they believe express the most favourable attitude to the topic, under pile no. 5 the statements expressing the most neutral attitude, and under pile no.9 statements which express the most unfavorable attitudes.
And then subdivided these three piles into nine piles,’ and arrange the statements in a logical order in accordance with the degree of appreciation or depreciation expressed ranging from extreme approval to extreme disapproval. Thurstone selected three hundred judges when he prepared the scale of attitude towards the church. But, in the opinion of the author, it is more economical to have 20 to 25 experienced judges.
The next step is the calculation of the scale values. The scale value is determined by means of a cumulative frequency graph. Where the curve will cross the 50% level of the opinions expressed by judges regarding a statement that will be the scale value of that statement.
The next step is to determine the ambiguity and the irrelevance of statements, and construct the final scale, including the testing of validity and reliability of the scale. An objective criterion of ambiguity is to determine the Q value of the statement. A simple method of determining the Q value is to measure the distance between the scale value at which the curve of proportions has an ordinate of ·25 and the scale value at which the same curve has an ordinate of ·75.
In addition to these tests of validity, Thurstone proposes a ‘criterion of irrelevance’ which may be summarised as follows: If each of the statements is assigned a scale value according to the attitude expressed by it, and if it is accepted or rejected by the reader because of the attitude it expresses, then the rating of other statements with reference to it will arrange themselves in a more or less normal frequency curve.
“If a large proportion who endorse a statement scaled at 4·0 on the scale should also endorse a statement scaled at 8·0 then we should infer that their voting on these two statements had been influenced by factors other than the attitude expressed in the statements.”
After eliminating the ambiguous and irrelevant statements, a scale should be constructed with statements of equally distant scale values ranging from extreme approval to extreme disapproval. The scale may consist of 40-45 statements, or the scale may be divided into form A and form B with 20-22 statements in each.
If an experimenter wants to study the effects of some propaganda or instruction, he may use one form at the beginning of the experiment, and the other at the end, and thus measure the effect of the imposed material. A person’s score is the median value of all the statements are indorses.
Likert Method:
As compared with Thurstone-Chave method of equal appearing intervals, R. Likert’s method of summated ratings is simpler to construct. It consists in either:
(1) Arranging five statements in a logical order of assertiveness, ranging from extreme approval to extreme disapproval, and asking the subjects to select one of them, or
(2) Asking the subject to select one response from five alternative responses, (like strongly approve, undecided, disapprove, strongly disapprove) in reply to a statement.
As an example of the first method the following examples may be taken. “Military training should be universal and compulsory, every effort should be made to enlist men for a training short of compulsion, we need to have every facility for training to all, but give freedom of choice, we should need the training only when our safety is threatened, all military training should be abolished.” Any one of these statements may be taken as an illustration of the second method.
Likert found that a great number of five point arbitrary scales of multiple choice statements, or intensity types, yielded distributions resembling a normal curve. This method is, therefore, based on the assumption that a statement is not merely a statement of fact, but represents an attitude or opinion which will be held in a wide variety of degrees of approval or disapproval by people.
On this basis he has devised the sigma method of scoring. The percentage of people checking each gradation of response can be transformed in a sigma value. These sigma values have been taken from Thorndike’s tables showing average values represented by the stated percentages.
Thus for example if 13 per cent check a certain statement, “strongly approve”, the sigma value according to Thorndike’s tables, is—1·63, similarly if 43 p.c., check approve, 21 p.c. undecided, 13 p.c. disapprove and 10 p.c. strongly disapprove, the corresponding sigma values will be ·43, +43, +·99 and +1·76. Since these sigman values represent a certain percentage of people who have responded to a certain statement in a certain way, they constitute a kind of generalized scale with which a wide variety of questions can be computed.
This method has two advantages, practical as well as theoretical. Practical advantage is that it is simple and less laborious than Thurstone method, in that it eliminates the sorting of statements by a number of judges, and substitutes the rating of attitude or expressions of people actually taking the test. Then it is free from the assumption that the scale-values are independent of the attitudes of the judges.
An example is given from a scale for measuring attitudes towards mathematics.’ Directions—Please write your name in the upper right hand corner. Each of the statements on this opinionative expresses a feeling or attitude towards mathematics. You are to indicate on a five point scale, the extent of agreement between the attitude expressed in each statement and your own feeling.
The five points are:
Strongly disagree (S.D.),
Disagree (D),
Undecided (U),
Agree (A),
Strongly agree (S.A.).
Draw a circle round the letters or letter which best indicates how closely you agree or disagree with the attitude expressed in each statement as it concerns you.