ATTITUDE SCALE

Unit iv

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 CONCEPT
• To assess the attitude or belief of an individual

• Designed to measure attitudes of a subject or group of subject

towards issues, institution, and groups of people.

• An attitude may be defined as a learned emotional response set for

or against something

• Thurstone defines an attitude as the degree of positive or negative

affect associated with some psychological objects.

• Sum total of a man’s inclinations and feelings, prejudices or bias,

ideas, tears about any specific topic.

• Attitude continuum extending from favourableness through neutral

to unfavourableness.
Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 CHARACTERISTICS
• It provides for quantitative measure on a uni-dimensional
scale.

• It uses statements from the extreme positive position to

extreme negative position.

• It generally uses a five point scale as: Strongly agree(SA),

Agree(A), Undecided(U),Disagree(D) and Strongly
disagree(SD).

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 CHARACTERISTICS

• It is usually standardised and norms are worked out.

• It disguises the attitude object rather than directly asking

about the attitude on the subject

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 PURPOSE

• Use in educational research

• These scales are used especially for finding the attitudes of

persons on issues like co-education, religions education,
democracy in schools etc depending upon the need of the
situation.

• Some Attitude Scales Methods of measuring attitudes

indirectly used for research purposes

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 PURPOSE

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 TYPES

•Likert’s Method (Rensis Likert)

•Thurstone Technique (Louis Leon Thurstone)

•Guttman’s scale (Louis Guttman)

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 LIKERT’S SCALE

• Subject’s response to each item may be considered as his or her rating of

attitude on a 5- point scale.

• Strongly agree(SA), Agree(A), Undecided(U),Disagree(D) and Strongly

disagree(SD).

• The individual gets the score as the sum of item credits.

• Collection of a number of statements about the subject.

• Items that to be either definitely favourable or definitely unfavourable to the

attitude

• All favourable statements are scored from the maximum to minimum.

• From a score of 5 to 1or 5 for strongly agree and so on 1 for strongly disagree.

• Total of these scores on all items measures a respondents favorableness.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 LIKERT’S SCALE

• scale consists of 30 items , the following score values 30✕5=150

( most favourable response) 30✕3=90 (neutral attitude) 30✕1=30
(most unfavourable attitude) It is thus known as a method of
summated ratings. Subject’s response to each item may be
considered as his or her rating of attitude on a 5- point scale and
the total score is obtained after all these weights are summated ,
the method is known as SUMMATED RATINGS.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 THURSTONE’S SCALE
•Attitude is accepted as an uni-dimensional linear
continuum.

•A large number of statements of various shades of

favourable and unfavourable opinions.

•First category each judge places the statements

considers most favourable to the object.

•Second ,those considered next most favourable.

•Eleventh category considers most unfavourable .

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 THURSTONE’S SCALE

•Tabulations are made which indicate the number of

judges who placed each item in each category.

•Median of the frequency distribution in which the

scores range from 0 to 11

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

THURSTONE’S SCALE

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

THURSTONE’S SCALE

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

THURSTONE’S SCALE

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

THURSTONE’S SCALE

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 Attitude Scale Construction and Standardisation

(1) Avoid the statements related to past, rather than present.

(2) Avoid factual statements.

(3) Avoid the statements giving more than one meaning.

(4) Use simple, clear and comprehensive language.

(5) Statements should be precise, which do not exceed 20
words.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Attitude Scale Construction and Standardisation

(6) Express only one idea in one statement.


(7) Instead of selecting compound or complex statements,
select simple statements.

(8) Words like only, just, merely should be used carefully.
(9) Avoid the words which could not be understood by the
examinee. 

(10) Avoid double negative statements.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Attitude Scale Construction and Standardisation



(10) Avoid double negative statements.

She never goes with nobody

The attitude won’t get you nowhere
The pilot can’t find no place to land

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Construction of the Scale

➡Is the statement proper, as per the classification of components ?

➡Is the statement proper, as per the classification of positive or
negative statement ?
➡Is the sentence formation appropriate or not ?
➡Is the selection of words in the statement, suitable or not ?
➡Does it measure the objective expected from the statement ?

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Item Analysis

Three statistics for each item:

(1)an item discrimination index
(2)the percentage of respondents marking each choice to each
item, and
(3)the item mean and standard deviation.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Item Analysis
(1)Item discrimination index

★Each item discriminates among the respondents in the same way as the
total score discriminates.
★The item discrimination index is calculated by correlating item scores
with total scale scores.
★Items that have very low correlation or negative correlation with the
total score should be eliminated because they are not measuring the same
thing as the total scale and hence are not contributing to the measurement
of the attitude.
Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 Item Analysis
(2)Percentage of respondents marking each choice to each item

✴The item analysis also shows the percentage of respondents

choosing each of the five options and the mean and standard
deviation for each item.

✴If most respondents choose only one or two of the options, the
item should be rewritten or eliminated.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Item Analysis
(3) Item mean and standard deviation.

After selecting the most useful items as indicated by the item

analysis, the researcher should then try out the revised scale with
a different group of subjects and again check the items for
discrimination and variability.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Validity

✦Validity concerns the extent to which the scale really measures the
attitude construct of interest.
✦The scale is capable of discriminating between two groups whose
members are known to have different attitudes.

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Reliability

๏Reliability is concerned with the extent to which the measure would yield
consistent results each time it is used.
๏The first step in ensuring reliability is to make sure that the scale is long enough—
that it includes enough items to provide a representative sampling of the whole
domain of opinions about the attitudinal object.
๏If the items are well constructed, scales having as few as 20 to 22 items will have
satisfactory reliability (often above .80).
๏The number of items needed depends partly on how specific the attitudinal object
is; the more abstract the object, the more items are needed.
๏Many statistical computer programs routinely calculate coefficient alpha as a
measure of reliability. (split half reliability)
Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU
 Reliability

4 3 2 1 4 3 4 1 2 3 2 1 207
4 4 4 2 1 2 5 4 3 2 4 2 207
3 1 4 3 4 3 5 3 1 4 3 3 207
3 4 3 5 2 1 3 1 1 3 5 3 207
3 1 1 3 5 3 1 1 1 3 5 1 212
4 2 3 1 3 2 3 4 1 3 5 1 212
5 5 1 1 1 2 2 2 4 4 4 2 212
5 3 5 1 5 5 3 4 1 1 5 1 212
3 4 1 3 5 4 3 5 4 1 3 1 214
4 3 2 4 2 1 3 4 5 3 1 5 215
3 5 5 4 1 4 1 4 1 2 3 1 215
4 1 4 1 1 5 2 5 1 5 1 1 215
2 1 4 2 4 3 5 2 5 1 1 1 217
3 1 1 5 3 1 3 5 2 2 5 2 218
1 1 5 5 5 3 3 3 1 2 5 3 218
1 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 5 1 1 5 218
4 5 4 2 4 4 2 2 2 1 4 2 219
4 1 1 1 4 5 3 1 2 1 3 4 219
1 4 2 5 5 1 2 4 2 1 1 2 220
1 4 4 3 2 3 3 1 5 3 2 4 220
5 4 5 3 5 3 1 1 1 1 5 2 221
2 3 2 1 3 4 5 1 4 1 4 3 221
4 3 2 4 2 3 2 3 4 4 3 2 223
2 3 5 4 2 1 5 4 4 3 4 5 226
4 5 1 4 3 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 227
3 5 5 1 3 1 3 1 3 5 2 1 227
5 2 3 1 1 4 3 2 5 1 1 1 227
4 1 1 5 4 1 1 4 1 5 4 5 227
5 3 5 4 5 2 1 4 2 4 4 5 229
5 1 5 5 4 2 2 5 1 5 5 5 229
4 4 4 5 4 1 1 5 3 4 2 1 229
4 1 1 4 2 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 229

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Reliability

5 5 5 2 3 4 1 5 4 4 5 5 4
5 5 5 2 1 5 1 5 2 4 4 1 5
5 5 5 5 1 4 1 5 2 5 5 5 5
5 5 5 5 5 5 1 1 2 1 5 5 5
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63
E10 F11 A10 C10 A11 C11 A12 D6 E5 F10 A13 B7 C12

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Reliability

14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20
F9 F9 G5 G5 A3 A3 B5 B5 C3 C3 D3 D3 E1
1 4 1 4 1 4 3 3 3 2 1 4 5
5 5 5 5 4 5 5 2 5 2 4 5 2
2 1 4 3 3 5 1 2 1 5 5 5 1
3 5 4 5 3 5 4 2 4 2 3 5 2
0.134643334597661 0.0559336948800371 0.0706872657981453 0.441195352986712 0.492487093579587 0.002670911258686680.713394982431243
1.52 1.957 1.846 0.777 0.691 3.159 0.369

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU

 Reliability

Many statistical computer programs routinely calculate coefficient alpha as a

measure of reliability. (split half reliability)

Coefficient Relationship

.00 to .20. Negligible

.20 to .40 Low
.40 to .60 Moderate
.60 to .80 Substantial
.80 to 1.00 High to very high

Dr. Nisanth.P.M, Assistant Professor, Dept of Education, RGU