ATTITUDE SCALES

INTRODUCTION: The concept of attitude is a hypothetical construct, which cannot be observed directly, but can be observed indirectly from behavioural manifestations, which in turn may be measurable. Understanding how attitudes are formed is one of the central issues in health care. Without an understanding of their formation and nature we may expect little success in key areas such as health education, it is for this reason that an understanding of the origins of attitudes is so essential. DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE Allport(1935) has defined an attitude as a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individuals response to all objects and situation with which it is related. ATTITUDE SCALE: Attitude Scales are self- report data collection instruments that ask respondents to report their attitude or feelings on a continuum. The attitude scales are composed of a number of related items, and respondents are given a score after the item responses are totaled. Respondents attitudes may be compared by examining the scores that are obtained for each person or for each group. STEPS IN CONSTRUCTION OF ATTITUDE SCALE THURSTONE SCALE Thurstone- type scale consists of a number of statements whose position on yhe scale has been determined by ranking operation performed by judges who are persons whose judgments about the relative rank of different statements along a dimension can be relied on. Various methods of securing judgments of scales position have been used i.e. the method of paired comparison. The method of equal-appearing intervals and successive intervals etc. Meaning of Scale Scale is a continuous continuum. It is marked off into numerical units that can be applied to some object in order to measure a particular property of it consisting of the highest and lowest point along with several intermediate points. Meaning of Scaling Scaling describes the procedure of assigning numbers to various degrees of opinion, attitudes and other concepts. Scaling is nothing but quantification of responses. It can be done in 2 ways: a. Making a judgment about some characteristics of an individual and then placing him directly on the scale that has been defined in terms of those characteristics i.e., providing numerical values or weightages to the responses. b. Constructing questionnaire in such a way that the score of individual responses assign him a place on the scale. The researcher has to decide about the response categories based on the nature/level of the sample. While assigning weightages to the responses the researcher has to consider the nature of the statements. If the statement is positive highest value is assigned to first

response category and the lowest value to the last response category. If the statement is negative in nature the highest value to the last response category and the lowest to the first response category. Thurstones method of constructing attitude scale Thurstone adopted the following method of construction: - A large number of simple statements regarding an issue are collected. - Each of these statements has to be judged by a panel of experts who are asked to place each statement at some point on attitude continuum ranging from most favourable to most unfavourable attitude. Each judge is given a box (pile) judges are validated the items on content, methodology and language aspect of the statement. - Items are validated as good items, poor items are discarded and some items are modified. - Some statistical values may be r, t, and d value whose values are basis for selection of the items for final administration. - Items of attitude scale are administered to a sample for item analysis procedure and these items are selected finally out of a large number of items. Only those items are selected on which there was agreement among the panel of judges as many as 11 judges are selected for validation. - In this way out of 100 items only 25 items were selected for final scale.

Items in the attitude scale are arranged in a random sequence and the respondent is instructed to put a tick mark against each item with which he/she agrees. Thurston calculated median value for each statement and established their score values. This scale is more appropriate and reliable when used for measuring a single attitude. Likerts type scale Likert type scales are also called as summated scales. This scale is frequently used in the study of social attitudes and other social science researchers. In this scale the respondent indicates his several degrees of agreement or disagreement with each item that constitute the scale instead of indicating his agreement for only few items. Each response is given a numerical score indicating his degree of agreement or disagreement based on 5 point response category. These response categories are Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Undecided (UD), Disagree (D), Strongly Disagree (SDA). Each point on the scale carries a score response indicating the most favourable is given the highest score 5 and the response indicating the least favourable carries the lowest score 1. For all positive statements the score value would be SA A UD D SDA 5 4 3 2 1 For all negative statements the score value would be SA A UD D SDA

1 2 3 4 5 The sum of the scores for individual responses to all the separate items gives his total score on the scale. By taking the scores of all samples and using a statistical technique we can measure the attitude of the individual. Steps in constructing Likert type of attitude scale 1. The researcher collects a large number of items considered relevant to the attitude being measured. 2. The items are then administered to a group of samples with whom the questionnaire is to be used. 3. The subjects indicate their response to each item by checking one of the categories of agreement or disagreement. 4. The response to various statements are scored in such a way that a response indicative of the most favourable attitude is given the highest score of 5 and that with the most unfavourable attitude is given the lowest score of 1. 5. The total score of each respondent is obtained by adding his scores that he received for separate statement. 6. The total scores are arranged, the researcher may use item analysis procedure to evaluate the individual statement. This forms the final scale of Likert.

Guttmans Scale (Cumulative Scale) This scale consists of series of statements to which respondent express his agreement or disagreement. The special feature of this scale is that the statements in it form a cumulative series, this means that the statements are related to each other in such a way that an individual who answers favourably to item number 3 also answers favourably to item number 2 and 1. If the respondent answers favourable to item number 4 also answers favourably to the item number 3, 2 and 1. So the respondent answers favourably all the items on one side and all the items on the other side also. The individual score is worked out by counting the number of points concerning the number of statements as he answers favourably. The response pattern of Guttmans scale is as follows: Response pattern Item numbers 5 4 3 2 x x x x x x x x x x Respondant score 1 x x x x x 5 4 3 2 1 0

X > Agree - > Disagree The score 4 means that the respondant is in agreement with only 4 items but not with the 5th item. In the same way we can interpret the score values of the respondants score. Steps in constructing Guttmans scale 1. It involves the selection of small number of statements from a large number of possible statements representing a universal of context. 2. For each statement, the weightages of 0 and 1 are assigned for 2 response categories of agreement and disagreement. This weightages assigned in such a way that one is always given to the response categories that indicate more of favourable attitude and the other for unfavourable attitude. 3. These statements administered to a sample of 100, they are asked to respond to these statements in terms of agree and disagree. A score is obtained for each individual by summing the weightages assigned to the response categories he has selected. The total score is obtained for each sample.