ATTITUDE SCALES

ATTITUDE SCALES
Attitudes:
 In psychology, an attitude refers to a set of emotions,
beliefs, and behaviors toward a particular object,
person, thing, or event.
 Structure of Attitudes structure can be described in
terms of three components.
 This model is known as the ABC model of attitudes.
A: Affective component
B: Behavioural component (or conative)
C: Cognitive component:
Affective component: This involves a person’s
feelings / emotions about the attitude object.
For example: “I am scared of spiders”.
Behavioural (or conative) component: The way
the attitude we have influences on how we act or
behave. For example: “I will avoid spiders and
scream if I see one”.
Cognitive component: This involves a person’s
belief / knowledge about an attitude object.
For example: “I believe spiders are
dangerous”.
Attitude Scales:
I. Thurstone scale
 It is also known as Thrustone scale or Equal
appearing interval scales.
 It is used in psychology and sociology.
 Thurstone scale was the first formal technique to
measure an attitude.
 Basically it is used to assess the attitude of people
regarding any social phenomena.
Definition:
 A Thurstone scale is a way of measuring people's
attitudes along a single dimension by asking them
to indicate whether they agree or disagree with
each of a large set of statements that are about that
attitude.
 It was developed by Louis Leon Thurstone in
1928, as a means of measuring attitudes towards
religion. Thurstone was one of the first and most
productive scaling theorists.
Purpose:
This kind of scale is used to measure people's attitude
towards a fairly clear and one- dimensional concept,
using a number of statements that vary in how they
express a positive or negative opinion about the main
concept.
Concept :
 Thurstone Scale is made up of statements about a
particular issue, and each statement has a numerical
value indicating how favourable or unfavourable it is
judged to be.
 Then it is administered to people , where they check
each of the statement they are agree or disagree.
II. Likert scale:
 These scales are sometimes referred to as summated
scales.
 It requires a respondent to indicate a degree of agreement
or disagreement with each of a series of statements
related to the attitude object.
Agreement
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 Undecided
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
Quality
 Excellent
 Good
 Fair
 Poor
 Very Poor
Importance
 Very Important
 Important
 Moderately Important
 Slightly Important
 Unimportant
To analyze a Likert Scale, each response category
is assigned a numerical value.
These examples could be assigned values such as
Strongly Agree=5, through Strongly Disagree=1
or the scoring could be reversed., or a –2 through
+2 system could be used.
They can be analyzed on an item-by-item basis, or
they can be summed to form a single score for
each individual.
Advantages
It is relatively easy to construct and administer.
Instructions that accompany the scale are easily
understood.
Disadvantages
It takes a longer time to complete as compared to
Semantic Differential Scales, etc.
III. Semantic differential scale:
 It is a special type of graphic scale, which is
increasingly being used, in marketing research.
 The unique characteristics of semantic
differential is the use of bipolar scales to rate
any object, event etc.
 A Respondents are given a group of these scales
and asked to check on each one point that
indicates their opinion of the subject in
question.
Each scales consist of two opposing adjectives
such as good/bad, clean/dirty, most popular/
least popular, etc. which are separated by a
continuum divided into seven segments.
It is best when used for image descriptive
purposes and is not recommended for overall
attitude measurement.
The advantage of using semantic differential is
its simplicity, while producing results
comparable with those of the more complex
scaling methods