NURSING EDUCATION

MATERIAL
ON
ATTITUDE SCALE

Submitted to, Submitted by,

Mrs. Arkierupaia Shadap Ms. Sujen Cintury

st
Assistant Professor 1 year M.Sc Nursing
SMCON Reg. No- 201963009
SMCON

Submitted on: 10.03.202

INTRODUCTION

Attitudes are “the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary

social psychology”.
 Gordon Allport, 1935

Attitude is an enduring disposition to consistently respond in a given manner.

Three components of an attitude are

 Affective - The feelings or emotions toward an object

 Cognitive - Knowledge and beliefs
 Behavioral - Predisposition to action, Intentions, Behavioral expectations

In social research, scaling techniques are used to measure the attitude and
behavior. One can make judgment about characteristic of an individual and place
him on a scale which is measuring for that characteristic.

DEFINITION OF SCALE

Originally the word ‘scale’ come from the Latin word scala, meaning a ladder or
flight of steps, a scale represents a series of ordered steps at fixed intervals used as
a standard of measurement. Scales are used to rank people's judgments of objects,
events, or other people from low to high or from poor to good.

A SCALE is a continuum from highest to lowest points and has intermediate

points in between these two extremities. The scale points are related that the first
point indicates a higher position than the second; the second point is higher than
the third point and so on.

Commonly used scales in behavioral research include

 Attitude scales designed to measure people's opinions on social issues,
 Employee rating scales to measure job-related performance,
 Scales for determining socioeconomic status used in sociological research,
 Product rating scales used in consumer research and
 Sensory evaluation scales to judge the quality of food, air, and other
phenomena.

ATTITUDE SCALE
An attitude scale is a special type of questionnaire designed to produce scores
indicating the intensity and direction (for or against) of a person's feelings about an
object or event.
There are several types of scales that can be constructed. The scale is constructed
so that all its questions concern a single issue.
Attitude scales are often used in attitude change experiments. One group of people
is asked to fill out the scale twice, once before some event, such as reading a
persuasive argument, and again afterward. A control group fills out the scale twice
without reading the argument. The control group is used to measure exposure or
practice effects. The change in the scores of the experimental group relative to the
control group, whether their attitudes have become more or less favorable,
indicates the effects of the argument.

Some important characteristics of attitude scale are:

 These are used for measuring the social attitudes.
 A questionnaire is prepared; by the items in the questionnaire assess the
attitude of an individual towards a matter, thing, an object or system and
score is allotted for each item.
 The individual is asked to express his response towards an object or system,
on the basis of his responses, he is assigned a score which indicates the
position.
 Some relevant and indirect statements can also be used to reveal the
attitude.
 The scale also specifies the crucial shades of opinions.

TYPES OF ATTITUDE SCALES

A. Single item scale

B. Multiple item scale
 Itemized category scale
 Rank order scale
 Comparative scale
 Point scale
 Differential scale
 Summated scale (LIKERT scale)
  SCALOGRAM ( GUTTMAN) method
 The Q- sort scaling technique
 SEMATIC differential/attitude scale
 Cumulative scale

a) Itemized Category Scale

A client admitted in the hospital is asked to indicate the level of satisfaction
for the service provided by the nursing staff in a particular ward. The options
which can be given to the client are to express his attitude can be:
 Highly satisfied
 Considerably satisfied
 Reasonably satisfied
 Unsatisfied
 Highly unsatisfied

b) Rank Order Scale

If the analysis is done for hospital in a particular area the maximum rate can
be given as 7, i.e the hospitals with high standards and meet all the
characteristics. Rating is done in the descending order and the hospitals with
minimum quality are given the minimum rate.

c) Comparative Scale

Respondents are asked to rate hospitals X in comparison to Hospital Y in

Hassan. Comparison can be given as:
 Excellent
 Very good
 Good
 Both are the same
 Poor
 Very poor

d) Point Scale
Method - 1
  Select the words which will give the opinion.
 The respondent is to cross out every word i.e., more annoying than
pleasing to him.
 The attitude of a respondent is known by calculating the numbers of
words crossed or not crossed. The words selected should be suggestive of
an attitude and the opposite words should also be given at the same time.
 One point is given to each agreement or disagreement whichever is to be
chosen.

Difficulties in this method

 The words may not be dichotomous in nature.

 The neutral or confused opinions cannot be represented.
 Adequate number of words expressing the same attitude may not be
found.

Method - 2

Two sets of words indicating both favorable and unfavorable opinions are
given. The favorable items may be crossed and favorable items may be left
un-scored.

e) Differential Scale( Thurstone Scale)

 The first formal technique for measuring an attitude.

 It was developed by Louis Leon Thurstone in 1928
 This scale is used to measure the social phenomenon
 It is made up of statements about a particular issue, and each statement
has a numerical value indicating how favorable or unfavorable it is
judged to be. Judges will determine the positions on the scale. The
position is determined by the method of equal appearing intervals.
 Judges will work independently to classify these statements into 11
groups.
1st group: Unfavorable statements to the specified issue (score-11)
2nd group: The next unfavorable statements and so on.
11th group: Favorable statements (score-1)
 6th group- The point at which the attitude is neutral.
 The scale value of a statement is computed as the ‘mean’ or ‘median’
position to which it is assigned by the judges.
 The evaluated statements spread out evenly from one extreme to the
other.
 The respondents are asked to check the statements with which they agree.
The scale values are not shown in the questionnaire and the statements
are arranged randomly.
 The mean or median of the scale values of the items are checked by the
respondent indicates his position in the scale.
 A series of statements whose positions have been determined are placed
neutrally by the judges.
 The scattered responses of an individual imply that the respondent has no
definite and organized attitude towards the phenomenon.

Three different methods for developing a unidimensional scale:

 Method of equal-appearing intervals;

 Method of successive intervals,
 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.
 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.

f) Summated Scale (Likert Scale)

 A Likert-type scale, named for Rensis Likert (1932) who developed this
type of attitude measurement
 To measure the social attitude likert type scale is used.
 It uses only the definitely favorable and unfavorable statements. It
excludes intermediate opinions.
 It consists of a series of statements to which the respondent is to react.
The respondent indicates the degree of agreement or disagreement.
 Each response is given a numerical score and the total score of a
respondent is found out by summing up his different scores for different
purposes. This total score indicates his position on the continuum.
 The Likert scale uses several degrees of agreement or disagreement, e.g.:
strongly approve, approve undecided, disapprove, and strongly
disapprove. These five points will constitute the scale. Each point of the
scale carries a score. “Strongly approve” is given the highest score (5 or
+2) and “strongly disapprove” is given the least score (1 or -2). Other
points will have the scores accordingly (i.e., 5,4,3,2 and 1)

E.g., Statement 1: Prohibition should be made compulsory

1 2 3 4 5
Strongly Approve Undecided Disapprove Strongly
approve disapprove
(5 or +2) (4 or +1) (3 or 0) (2 or -1) (1 or -2)

Construction of a Likert Scale

  The researcher gathers a large number of statements which clearly
indicate favorable or unfavorable attitude towards the issue in question.
 The questionnaire consisting of the above five points with respect to a
statement are administered to the respondents who indicate their
responses.
 The responses will imply various scores. The scores are consistently
arranged either from the highest to the lowest, or from the lowest to the
highest.
 By adding up the different scores of an individual, his total score is
calculated (i.e., summation of different scores for different scores for
different statements).
 The researcher should identify the items, which have a high
discriminatory power. The responses are interpreted to determine which
of the statements discriminate very clearly between high scores and low
scores on the total scale.
 It has to be ensured that the questionnaire is consistent. To achieve this,
the items with low discriminatory power or those having no significant
correlation with the total score are eliminated.

Example

Indicate degree of agreement or disagreement with each of the following

statements about marijuana by circling one of the following letters

SA = Strongly agree

A = Agree

U = Undecided

D = Disagree

SD = Strongly disagree

Marijuana use corrupts the individual. SA A U D SD

Its use can be beginning of a sad situation. SA A U D SD

Marijuana does some people a lot of good. SA A U D SD

People who are very favorable toward marijuana use would be expected to strongly
agree with the favorable statements and strongly disagree with the unfavorable
statements. They would earn a high score on the scale when the item scores are
added together. Conversely, people with very unfavorable attitudes would be
expected to strongly disagree with the favorable statements and strongly agree with
the unfavorable statements, and would score low on the scale. Note the importance
of reverse scoring the negative items. A person who strongly disagrees with the
statement "Marijuana use corrupts the individual" is expressing a positive attitude
toward marijuana use, and hence the item is scored as a 5 rather than 1.

g) Scalogram (Guttman) Method

 Named after the US psychologist Louis H. Guttman (1916–87).

 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 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.
 The Scalogram analysis is a simple method of the testing the scalability
of the statements. The views of judges are not necessary in this case. A
diagram in which the individual responses are laid out is called a
scalogram. The perfect scale implies that a person who answers a given
question favorably will have a higher total score than a person who
answers it unfavorably.
 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. A simple
example of a Guttman scale is a social distance scale.
 It 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), she/he would be able to answer the earlier questions (e.g.,
summing two 2-digit numbers).
 Guttman model is deterministic in nature. It assumes that a person, who
responds positively/negatively to one item, must respond
positively/negatively to a series of others. The model can be made
probabilistic rather than deterministic. This attempt has been made by
‘Latent Structure Analysis’, as developed by Lazarsfeld.
 Guttman has also developed another technique. According to this, the
respondent not only gives his view (agreement or disagreement) but he
also mentions the intensify (degree) which is classified into five
categories. For each respondent, we thus get two scores (content score
and intensity sore) which can be plotted against each other on a graph.
The result often gives U-shaped curve. The more extreme views have
highest intensity. The content score at the lowest point of the curve may
be regarded as the dividing line between favorable and unfavorable
responses. The lowest point suggesting favorable response is not affected
by the form and the wording of the individual items. Hence, this method
is objective.

The items in the questionnaire which relate to this could consist of the following:
Yes /No

1) Family planning is the best hope for our country ………………

2) Family planning would lead to healthier children ………………

3) We should all participate in the family planning programme. ………….

h) The Q- Sort Scaling Technique

 The method is widely applied in the study of personality.
 The peculiar characteristic of this methodology is that here it is more
important to make comparisons among different responses within
respondents than between respondents. Thus it is a comparative rather
than an absolute rating method.
  The individual can make a study changes in his own image or in his ideal
person and so on.
 The data yielded by the Q-sort can be summarized into a single score, as
in a summated scale, to yield a scale on ‘adjustment’.
 The adjustment score of the control group can be compared with the
therapists’ ratings of the success of therapy, and the extent of agreement
can be known. The technique can also be applied to the study of various
types of socio-economic attitudes.
 In the area of management, the application of Q-sort has come up in
marketing research. Here the respondents may be requested to enunciate
their images of their ideal brands, specified brands and their current
brand. The respondent may be given a large number of statements (50-
100) describing the characteristics of a product.
 For instance for a cosmetic product like shampoo he may be asked to
compare alternatives with adjectives like "easy to use", "economical",
and "safe for children", with instructions to array them along the
continuum "least preferred - the ideal shampoo". Essentially what the
respondents have done here is to array the attributes along the scale.
 The Q-sort technique is faster and less tedious for subjects than paired
comparison measures. It also forces the subject to conform to quotas at
each point of the scale so as to yield a normal or quasi-normal
distribution.

i) Semantic Differential Attitude Scale

 The term Semantic differential scale refers to any collection of rating
scales anchored by bipolar adjectives.
 It was developed Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum.
 It measures people's reactions to stimulus words and concepts in terms of
ratings on bipolar scales defined with contrasting adjectives at each end.
 The semantic differential is a good instrument for exploring the
connotative meaning of things. Connotation refers to the personal
meaning of something, as distinct from its physical characteristics.
 The semantic differential makes the measurement and comparison of
various objects or concepts possible.
  It is a very flexible approach to obtaining measures of attitudes. The,
object that is rated is called the "concept" and almost anything can be
rated including family planning, cosmetics, political parties, etc.
 It is based on a seven-point rating scale for each of a number of attributes
relating to the research topic. The extreme points represent the bipolar
adjectives with the central category representing neutral. In the semantic
differential scale only the extremes have names. The in-between
categories have either blank spaces or sometimes a number.
 Some examples of the scale are as follows

Good_ _ _ _ _ _ _ Bad
3210123

 Usually, the position marked 0 is labeled "neutral," the 1 positions are

labeled "slightly," the 2 positions "quite," and the 3 positions
"extremely." A scale like this one measures directionality of a reaction
(e.g., good versus bad) and also intensity (slight through extreme).
Typically, a person is presented with some concept of interest, e.g., Red
China, and asked to rate it on a number of such scales. Ratings are
combined in various ways to describe and analyze the person's feelings.

 The preparation of a semantic differential scale for a study requires

expressing the things that could he used to describe the object, and thus
serve as a bets for attitude formation, in terms of positive and negative
statements. The negative phrase is sometimes put on the left side of the scale
and sometimes on the right. This prevents a respondent with a positive
attitude from simply checking either the left or right hand sides without
reading the describing words.

TABLE: Polar Adjective Pair

High on value High on activity High on strength
dimension dimension dimension

Good- bad Active-passive Strong-weak

Beautiful-ugly Energetic-insert Large-small
Friendly-unfriendly Fast-slow Hard-soft
 j) Cumulative Scale/Bogardus Scale

 In the cumulative scale, a respondent is given a number of questions, to

express agreement or disagreement over an issue.
 The items are arranged in such a way that a respondent who responds
favorably to item number 2 also replies favorably to item number 1 and
one who replies favorably to item number 3 also replies favorably to
items 1 and 2, and so on. Therefore, the individuals who answer
favorably have higher total score than those who answer unfavorably.
The score of an individual is computed by counting the number of items
he answers favorably. His scores indicate for him a particular position on
the scale. The intervals between the positions may not be equal. The
items may be arranged from favorableness to un-favorableness in a
systematic manner or may be randomly selected.
 The purpose of social distance scale is to measure the attitude towards a
particular racial group or groups. The Bogardus type scale is given below:

Relationship English Negro French Chinese

I would accept
Marriage 1 1 1 1
Friendship 2 2 2 2
Neighbor 3 3 3 3
Employment in 4 4 4 4
same occupation
Citizenship in 5 5 5 5
my country
Visitors to my 6 6 6 6
country
Exclusion from 7 7 7 7
my country

The respondent is to circle each of the seven categories to which he is willing to

accept particular group. The respondent’s first feeling reactions can be known by
this. For a group, if a respondent circles 3, he is also expected to circle 4 and 5 for
the same group. If a respondent does not circle 3, he will most probably not circle
1 and 2, for these indicate even closer relationship. The seven categories indicate a
gradually increasing social distance.

The social distance can also be calculated mathematically. In order to do this,

weights are attached to different categories of relationships. Thus, if there are only
five categories, the weights such as 1,2,3,4 and 5 can be assigned to the first five
categories respectively. The following procedure is generally adopted for the
measurement of social distance:

1. Place the weights and percentage response for each category in rows.
2. Multiply the percentage response by its weight.
3. Add up the product and this will be the social distance.

In the Bogardus scale, the score does not indicate the exact extent or degree of
preferred of a group over the other. One important difficulty in this type of scale is
that one may not be fully acquainted with a group and hence it is not possible for
him to state the attitude. The influence of an individual member or members may
not be eliminated from the mind while making preferences.

Usually a person, who answers YES to 1, would have a high probability of

answering YES to the subsequent statements. Any person who does not answer as
YES to 1 but does answer as YES to 2 would have a high probability of answering
YES to later items. Any set of items that produces a pattern of responses as we
have described here is called Guttman Scale.

 Guttman scale analysis is usually applied to dichotomous data, i.e., data with
only two values, YES or NO, 0 or 1, agree or disagree, etc. However, a
number of reasons have made the Guttman scale and impractical tool for the
measurement of attitudes. First, the construction of the scale requires a lot of
time and effort. Secondly, there may be very few items existing that may fit
the model. Since such scales seldom have more than eight items, they can
make only rather gross distinctions among respondents

REFERENCES

1. Neerja KP. Textbook of Nursing Education. 2nded. New Delhi: Jaypee

Brothers Publishers; 2003. p. 432-435.
2. P. Basheer Shebeer. Textbook of Nursing Education. 1 st edition. EMMESS
Medical Publishers; 2018. P. 246-248
3. Attitude Scale [Internet].2011[updated on 2011 July]. Available
from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_Scale. Retrieved on: 2011 Nov
18.