The Attitude of Youth towards Ethics and corruption in Ethiopia: in the case

of Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa and Regional Capital Cities.

Literature Review-Conceptual Note
1. Introduction
Every person does have attitudes of different kind towards different scenarios in life.
These attitudes could be of positive or negative in nature. The negative and positive
nature of the attitudes towards a certain object would have a significant impact on the
actions that any given individual would take in a given point of time.
Attitudes were first studied in a laboratory setting by Lange back in 1888 in conjugation
with studies of reaction time. He observed that the Aufgabe or task attitude played a
decisive role in all psychological experiments of perception, recall, judgment, thought,
e.t.c. The concept of attitude really came into its own with the work of Thomas &
Znaniecki in 1918 and their monumental study of polish peasants. They brought into the
research repertoire the concept of environment and the influence of the social element on
attitudes, which were defined as The state of mind of the individual toward a value
(values were defined as social in nature). (Barbara J. Mostyn, 1978)
2. Definitions of Attitude, Ethics and Corruption :
2.1. Definition of Attitude
Attitudes have always been easier to measure than to define, which has led many to
conclude that Attitudes are what attitude scale measure. The derivation of the word
attitude comes from the latin word aptus meaning fitness or adaptedness and was thus
defined as a subjective or mental state in preparation for action. It was first used by
Herbert Spencer in 1862 to describe a mental concept. He pointed out that attitudes of
mind determined how people arrived at correct judgments. (Barbara J. Mostyn, 1978)
According to Eagly and Chaiken (1993), Attitude is a psychological tendency that is
expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor and disfavor. Fazio
(1995) in its explanation he expressed attitude as an association in memory between a
given object and a given summary evaluation of the object. Petty and Cacioppo (1981) on
the other hand have explained attitude as a general and enduring positive or negative
feeling about some person, object or issue. The fourth scholars named Zanna and Rempel
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(1988) wrote attitude as the categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative

dimension.
The definition of attitude have been given by different scholars, but the above four
psychologists agree on one thing, that is attitude involves an evaluative judgment about
someone or something.
The Book entitled Introduction to psychology states , the defining characteristics of
attitude is that they express an evaluation of some object, where, the evaluations are
expressed by terms such as liking-disliking, pro-anti, favoring-not favoring, positivenegative. The evaluations are a feeling tone aroused by attitude object. The Objects of
attitude could be of entities (like a lecture, restaurant), people (like best friend, the
president), abstract concepts (like abortion, civil rights, foreign aid, corruption ), and
so on. (Clifford T. Morgan, 1993)
2.2. Definition of Ethics

(Ethics)

- -

(1998)



Ethics- are the set of moral principles that guide a persons behavior. These
morals are shaped by social norms, cultural practices and religious influences.
Ethics reflect beliefs about what is right, what is wrong, what is just, what is
unjust, what is good, what is bad interms of human behavior. They serve as a
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compass to direct how people should behave towards each other, understand and
fulfill their obligations to society, and live their lives.
Ethics is the Basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human
conduct. It includes study of universal values such as the essential equality of all
men and women, human and natural rights, obedience to the law of land, concern
for health and safety and, increasingly, also for natural environment.
2.3. Definition of Corruption
(Corruption)

oxford English Dictionary

(kato, 1995)

( 2000)

3. Components of Attitudes:
The most widely used model of attitude emanates from the very definition of attitude
where it can be illustrated as Attitude is an overall evaluation of an object that is based
on cognitive, affective and behavioral information. Where, Affective is for Feeling,
cognition is for thinking and Behavior is for doing. Let us see these three components of
attitude:
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Affective component: It is the emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.

o Attitudes can differ in Valence (direction like positive /Negative
/Neutral)
o Attitudes can vary in strength where strong attitudes are more:

Persistent over time

Resistant to change

Likely to influence information processing

Likely to predict behavior.

Cognitive Component: refers to the beliefs, thoughts and attributes we associate

with an object. It is may be based on primarily upon positive or negative attributes
associated with the object. It is the opinion or belief segment of an attitude.

Behavioral component: - refers to past behaviors or experiences regarding an

object. It also is an intention to behave in a certain way towards someone or
something.

4. Functions of Attitudes:
According to Katz (1960), attitudes have four types of functions that are depicted as
follows:
a. Knowledge: The world is too complex we group people, object and events into
categories and develop stereotyped attitudes. The attitudes about that category
provide us with meaning, making inferences about the members.
b. Instrumentality: it is a means to an end, where we develop favorable attitudes
towards objects that reward us and unfavorable attitudes towards punishment.
Once developed, it provides a simple means of evaluating an object.
c. Ego Defense: some attitudes protect the person from recognizing certain thoughts
or feelings that threaten their self-image, for example like displacing ager to other
groups.
d. Value Expressiveness: define the self and maintain self-worth. Some attitudes
express the individuals basic values and reinforce his/her self-image. Some
attitudes symbolize a persons identification with or membership in particular
group or subcultures.
5. Formation of Attitudes
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The formation of attitudes can be shaped from different angles and scenarios.
Accordingly the following eight factors are identified by most psychologists as important
factors that lead to the formation of attitudes.
a. Experience with Objects: attitudes can develop from a personally rewarding or
Punishing Experience with an object
b. Classical Conditioning: It involves involuntary responses and is acquired
through the pairing of to stimuli.
c. Operant Conditioning: is based on the law of effect and involves voluntary
response, behaviors.
d. Vicarious Learning: formation of attitudes by observing behavior of other and
consequences of those behaviors.
e. Family and Peer groups: a person may learn attitudes through imitation of
parents and peer groups.
f. Neighborhood: involves being told what attitudes to have by parents, schools,
community, organizations, religious doctrine, friends and e.t.c.
g. Economic Status: the economic status of a person governs various attributes of
that person like the exposure he/she has, the way he/she acts, the expectations on
how to behave, informations he/she receives, peers to engage with and the like.
Hence according to such factors the person might have different kinds of attitudes
towards a single object.
h. Mass Communication: television, Radio, newspaper and magazine feed their
audiences large quantities of information, where these information shape the
attitude a person will poses.
6. Theories of Attitudes and their relation with Behavior Formation
As demonstrated above, Attitudes can be formed as the consequence of the earlier
mentioned factors. Here we will see the Theories developed to explain How Attitudes can
be formed. These Theories are of two in kind and are explained as follows.
a. Cognitive

Consistency

Theories: this theory is concerned with the

inconsistencies that arise between beliefs, knowledge, and evaluation about the
object. There are two types of theories in this category.

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i. Balance Theory by Heider: - It is concerned with consistency in the

judgment of people and issues that are linked by some form of
relationship. People seek balance in their cognitive structure and attitude
change comes when system is not balanced. Note that a balanced state is a
state where everything fits harmoniously.
ii. Congruity Theory: - it is a theory that seeks to identify Congruity-stable
state and incongruity-unstable state. It focuses on change in the evaluation
of sources and concepts linked by associative or dissociative assertion.
Hence the change of attitude comes to resolve incongruity.
b. Social Judgment Theories: it emphasizes on the core concept where a persons
initial attitude is point of reference on which he evaluates other opinions. This
notions have the following two points:
i. Attitude of acceptance: A favorable opinion encompasses objectable
opinions.
ii. Attitude of rejection: Objectable Opinion encompasses acceptable
opinion.
7. Youth and its Definition
Youth is best understood as a period of transition from the dependence of childhood to
adulthoods independence. That is why, as a category, youth is more fluid than other
fixed age-groups. Yet, age is the easiest way to define this group, particularly in relation
to education and employment, because youth is often referred to a person between the
ages of leaving compulsory education, and finding their first job.
The United Nations, for statistical purposes, defines youth, as those persons between
the ages of 15 and 24 years, without prejudice to other definitions by member states.
Several UN entities, instruments and regional organizations have somewhat different
definitions of youth, which the United Nations secretariat recognizes. The following table
summarizes these differences.
Entity/Instrument/Organization Youth- Age

Reference

UN Secretariat /UNESCO/ILO

15-24

UN Instrument, statistics

UN Habitat (Youth Fund)

15-32

Agenda 21

UNICEF/WHO/UNFPA

Adolescent:10-19,

Literature Review

Young: UNFPA
Page 6

10-24 and Youth15-24

UNICEF/The

convention

on Child until 18

UNICEF

Rights of the child

The African Youth Charter

15-35

African Union

According to the chapter Legal Definition
of Children and Youth, in the book titled The International Law of Youth Rights: Source
documents and commentary, it can be quoted as: The age group 15-24 years has been
defined as youth by both statistical officers and youth officers of the UN system, as well
as by most national census agencies throughout the world. Likewise, Children has been
defined by those officers as human beings aged 14 and under.
7.1.How Youth Develop Attitude
7.2.Youth and Ethical Problems
7.3.Ethiopian Youth Policy, Ethics and Corruption
7.4.Youth and Corruption: Statistical Facts in Ethiopia
7.5.Ethics problems and its implications on the Youth
8. Measuring Attitudes towards Corruption
One of the first to attempt to measure attitudes in a scientific way Luis Thurstone (1927)
developed a concept that attitudes vary along continua and should be measured
accordingly. Thus, according to this early way of measuring attitudes, an attitude scale in
which judges assign scale values to attitudinal statements and subjects are asked to
respond to these statements. The method has two stages, where the first is ranking
operations, performed by judges who assign scale values to attitudinal statements.
Second, ask subjects to respond to the attitudinal statements.
In 1950s a scholar called Jan Stapel developed a scale called Stapel scale named after
the developer. It is a scale used to measure simultaneously the direction and intensity of
an attitude. It is a measure of attitudes that consists of a single adjective in the center of
an even number of numerical values. The scale measures how close to or distant from the
adjective a given stimulus is perceived to be.

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The other way of measuring attitudes in the psychological field of study was the Bogus
Pipeline (BPL) (1970-1991), a procedure intended to improve the truthfulness of self
reports. Psychologists have long attempted to measure accurately individuals attitudes
and opinions. It was hence done by convincing subjects that a psychological
measurement apparatus was capable of recording their genuine attitudes and opinions. It
was thought to invoke a motivation in subjects to offer more veracious self-reports.
Though abandoned because the procedure was deemed as a laboratory technique in social
psychology, it was designed to convince subjects that a sophisticated new electronic
devise could accurately detect their true attitudes and opinions; it was then presumed
that subjects would be motivated to respond truthfully to such questions. The procedure
as originally conceived comprised three elements where the first was subjects were
shown an impressive physiological monitoring device, which was purported to measure
both the direction and the extremity of their attitudes towards some issue, second subjects
were connected to the apparatus, and several rigged demonstrations convinced them of
the machines accuracy, constituting a Verisimilitude Phase and last, while subjects
were still connected to the apparatus, their attitudes were assessed when they guessed the
machines readings in response to a series of likhert-format questions. Its use was in
three phases where, First wave was between 1970-1974, Second wave was between
1975-1981 and the third wave was between 1982-1991 and latter abandoned after 1991.
But according to Neal J. Roese and David W. Jamieson research finding shows, the BPL
is better in dislodging negative information about respondents than the conventional
paper and pen (PP) methodology.
Attitudes through Behavioral actions can lead to corrupt practices. This is a hypothetical
scenario that needs to be verified. According to Andvig and Moene (1990) the individual
incentive to be corrupt is higher the more corruption is wide spread, because it is easier to
both find corruptible officials as well as to escape punishment. Where-as the Hypothesis
by Tirole (1996) shows because of information asymmetries, individuals from a group
with a bad reputation have less of an incentive to behave honestly.
In different research articles on corruption, one may find two opposing approaches (ways
of thinking in turn attitudes) regarding the impact of corruption. The First approach is
called efficiency enhancing and the second approach is known as efficiency
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reducing. In efficiency enhancing approach the researchers (Huntington, 1968;

Freidrich, 1972) argued that corruption greases the wheel of business and commerce and
facilitates economic growth and investment. On the contrary, in efficiency reducing
approach other researchers (Krueger 1974; Tanzi and Davoodi, 1997; Mauro, 1995)
claimed that corruption slows down the wheels of business and commerce. As a result, it
hinders economic growth and distorts the allocation of resources. Therefore, it has a
damaging impact on efficiency. Al-Marhubi (2000) in his investigation founded that there
is a positive relationship between corruption and inflation. Long periods of high inflation
are associated with higher levels of corruption (Getz and Volkema, 2001).
Amal Krishna Saha and etal (2014) concluded that attitudes of studenst of higher learning
towards corruption in India, one experiences corrupt behavior in his or her daily life
through business contract, official work and public services. To curb down the prevalent
large scale corruption, their respondents believe that all public dealings should

be

transparent and fair as well as, it should make officials accountable for their corrupt
behavior.
a. Attitude Measurement Techniques
Attitudes are complex and not fully understood. Where, their measurement tends
to focus on beliefs and emotional feelings. The general methods of measuring
attitude include Questionnaire method (self-reports and verbal reaction to
situations) and Observation methods (actions or psychological reactions like
sweating, pupils dilation and the like).
The Measurement Methodology is divided in to two where it is also further
divided into four categories. The former two categories include Non-Structured
and Structured methods. They are further dissected to Disguised and Non
Disguised. (N.B. The method is structured when there is a formal structure or
procedure for the Questioning and It is disguised when the respondent does not
know the purpose of the interview.), the following diagram illustrates the
relationship between the categories.

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Word
Association:
Sentence
Completion,
Pictoral
Techniques

Interviews:
Focus Group
Discussion, Indepth Interview

Guessing error
reveal attitudes

Scales: Ordinal,
Interval...

Non-Structured

Structured

Disguised

Non-Disguised

i. Non-Structured Non Disguised Methods: the method is good for

explanatory studies.

In-Depth Interview: is conducted by psychologists-in-depth

discussion around the subject and each aspect introduced.

Respondents are encouraged to open up,

Depends on interviewers skill and imagination

Is costly

Gives errors due to small sample

Focus Group Discussion: groups are interviewed hence,

It reduces costs and stimulates respondents by group

interaction

Its negative is the FGD could be dominated by one or more

individuals, which will overshadow the response of others.

ii. Non Structured- Disguised Methods: it helps to get respondents to open

up, where they normally wont. The projective techniques are used to see

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conscious/unconscious attitudes. These are vague/ incomplete stimuli and

it is believed respondents respond to reveal their attitude.

Word Association

First reaction to words related to the subject

Respondents are timed so as to take into account answers

which are reasoned out

Its like a game but requires skill to interpret results.

Sentence completion

Respondents are asked to complete incomplete sentences

with first thought and it is also timed.

Here some respondents may be able to see through the

disguises.

Story Completion: the method uses the respondent to complete a

story, where it is thought to identify how the respondent will end
the story if given incomplete story.

Pictorial Techniques: the techniques use pictures as stimuli.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): shows series of

ambiguous pictures and respondents are asked to tell a
story. It is held that in describing the characters/ actions the
respondent indirectly tells about himself.

Cartoon tests: is a modification of TAT and is simpler to

show. Cartoons pertinent to the problem are shown
one/more balloons that are left open for the respondent to
fill. The cartoons should be carefully chosen to reflect
situations in which respondents can project themselves
easily.

iii. Structured Non Disguised Techniques: Since, disguise makes

measurements indirect and comparisons become difficult, development of
standardized attitude measuring instrument is necessary. Scaling is used to
measure attitudes objectively and basically there are two types of scales.

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Ordinal Scales: these scales rank respondents according to some

characteristics or rank items. It does not measure degree of
like/dislike rankings or distance between rankings.

Interval Scales: the scales give items/individuals rank order plus

measure distance between rank positions in equal units. Other
scales could be classified as Self Rating Scales (Graphic rating
scales, semantic differential scales), Ranking, Multiple item scales
(Thurston scale, Likhert scale).

iv. Structured Disguised Methods: since, non structured technique have

the characteristics of slow and costly data collection with subjective
interpretation and open to bias, structured methods overcome the problem.

It is held that people tend to know more about things they favor
/like and if asked to guess factual information, they will guess in a
direction favorable to their ideas.

The extent and direction of these guessing errors is assumed to

reveal their attitudes at the subject.

b. Techniques for Measuring Attitudes:

There are varieties of techniques devised to measure attitudes. The affective,
cognitive and behavioral components of attitudes could be measured in different
means. For example sympathetic nervous system responses may be recorded
using physiological measures (like galvanic Skin response {GSR}, blood pressure
and pupil dilation where these measures provide a means of assessing attitudes
without verbally questioning the respondent.) to quantify affects, but they are not
good measures of behavioral intentions. Direct verbal statements concerning
affect, belief or behavior are used to measure behavioral intent. Obtaining verbal
statements from respondents generally requires that the respondents perform a
task such as Ranking, Rating, sorting or choices. The major techniques used in
measuring attitudes include:
i. Methods of summated Rating: The Likert Scale: - Respondents are
asked to indicate the degree of agreement or disagreement with each
statement and each degree of agreement/disagreement is given a numerical
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scale and total score is computed by summing these from all statements.
The procedure :

Get large number of statements relevant to the attitude in question

which are clearly identifiable as favorable or unfavorable.

Select a series of responses that represent various degree of

agreement/disagreement (5,7,9,11 point scale)

Administer statements to a representative group, which makes it

popular among researchers,

Compute each individual score by summing scores of the response

to each question.

Drop those statements that do not discriminate between the high

slow scorers on the total test.

The disadvantages are because it is ordinal type, it does not

measure difference between attitudes and it is time consuming in
preparing the questions.

ii. Semantic Differential: respondents are asked to rank issues according to

attitudes being studied. It permits development of descriptive profiles that
facilitate comparisons. The bipolar adjectives are developed as antonyms
or opposite. It is simple to use, easy and fast to administer and sensitive to
small differences to attitude. It is highly versatile, reliable and generally
valid.
iii. Measuring Behavioral Intentions: Behavioral Differential
The behavioral component of an attitude involves the behavioral
expectations of an individual towards an attitudinal object. The scales ask
about the likelihood of a person to perform some future action for example
the likelihood of reporting corruption. The scale might also be measured
by using scale of subjective probabilities, ranging from Hundred percent
for absolutely certain to zero absolutely no chance.
Behavioral Differential is a rating instrument similar to a semantic
differential, developed to measure the behavioral intentions of subjects
towards future actions.
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9. Past Studies regarding Attitude in regard to Ethics and Corruption

10. The Methods of Analysis and interpretation to be used in the research

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oxford English Dictionary

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