Attitude Measurement

by Saul McLeod published 2009

Perhaps the most straightforward way of finding out about someones attitudes would be to
ask them. However,attitudes are related to self-image and social acceptance (i.e. attitude
functions).
In order to preserve a positive self-image, peoples responses may be affected by social
desirability. They may not well tell about their true attitudes, but answer in a way that they
feel socially acceptable.
Given this problem, various methods of measuring attitudes have been developed.
However, all of them have limitations. In particular the different measures focus on different
components of attitudes cognitive, affective and behavioral and as we know, these
components do not necessarily coincide.
Attitude measurement can be divided into two basic categories
o
Direct Measurement (likert scale and semantic differential)
o

Indirect Measurement (projective techniques)

Semantic Differential
The semantic differential technique of Osgood et al. (1957) asks a person to rate an issue
or topic on a standard set of bipolar adjectives (i.e. with opposite meanings), each
representing a seven point scale.
To prepare a semantic differential scale, you must first think of a number of words with
opposite meanings that are applicable to describing the subject of the test.
For example, participants are given a word, for example 'car', and presented with a variety
of adjectives to describe it. Respondents tick to indicate how they feel about what is being
measured.
In the picture (above), you can find Osgood's map of people's ratings for the word 'polite'.
The image shows ten of the scales used by Osgood. The image maps the average
responses of two groups of 20 people to the word 'polite'.

The semantic differential technique reveals information on three basic dimensions of

attitudes: evaluation, potency (i.e. strength) and activity.
Evaluation is concerned with whether a person thinks positively or negatively about the
attitude topic (e.g. dirty clean, and ugly - beautiful).
Potency is concerned with how powerful the topic is for the person (e.g. cruel kind, and
strong - week).
Activity is concerned with whether the topic is seen as active or passive (e.g. active
passive).
Using this information we can see if a persons feeling (evaluation) towards an object is
consistent with their behavior. For example, a place might like the taste of chocolate
(evaluative) but not eat it often (activity). The evaluation dimension has been most used by
social psychologists as a measure of a persons attitude, because this dimension reflects
the affective aspect of an attitude.

Evaluation of Direct Methods

An attitude scale is designed to provide a valid, or accurate, measure of an individuals
social attitude. However, as anyone who has every faked an attitude scales knows there
are shortcomings in these self report scales of attitudes. There are various problems that
affect the validity of attitude scales. However, the most common problem is that of social
desirability.
Socially desirability refers to the tendency for people to give socially desirable to the
questionnaire items. People are often motivated to give replies that make them appear well
adjusted, unprejudiced, open minded and democratic. Self report scales that measure
attitudes towards race, religion, sex etc. are heavily affected by socially desirability bias.
Respondents who harbor a negative attitude towards a particular group may not wish be
admit to the experimenter (or to themselves) that they have these feelings. Consequently,
responses on attitude scales are not always 100% valid.

Projective Techniques
To avoid the problem of social desirability, various indirect measures of attitudes have been
used. Either people are unaware of what is being measured (which has ethical problems)
or they are unable consciously to affect what is being measured.

Indirect methods typically involve the use of a projective test. A projective test is involves
presenting a person with an ambiguous (i.e. unclear) or incomplete stimulus (e.g. picture or
words). The stimulus requiresinterpretation from the person. Therefore, the persons
attitude is inferred from their interpretation of the ambiguous or incomplete stimulus.
The assumption about these measures of attitudes it that the person will project his or her
views, opinions or attitudes into the ambiguous situation, thus revealing the attitudes the
person holds. However, indirect methods only provide general information and do not offer
a precise measurement of attitude strength since it is qualitative rather than quantitative.
This method of attitude measurement is not objective or scientific which is a big criticism.
Examples of projective techniques include:
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Thematic Apperception Test (or TAT)
Draw a Person Task

Thematic Apperception Test

Here a person is presented with an ambiguous picture which they have to interpret.
The thematic apperception test (TAT) taps into a persons unconscious mind to reveal the
repressed aspects of their personality.
Although the picture, illustration, drawing or cartoon that is used must be interesting enough
to encourage discussion, it should be vague enough not to immediately give away what the
project is about.
TAT can be used in a variety of ways, from eliciting qualities associated with different
products to perceptions about the kind of people that might use certain products or
services.
The person must look at the picture(s) and tell a story. For example:
o What has led up to the event shown
o What is happening at the moment
o What the characters are thinking and feeling, and
o What the outcome of the story was

Draw a Person Test

Figure drawings are projective diagnostic techniques in which an individual is instructed
to draw a person, an object, or a situation so that cognitive, interpersonal, or psychological
functioning can be assessed. The test can be used to evaluate children and adolescents
for a variety of purposes (e.g. self-image, family relationships, cognitive ability and
personality).
A projective test is one in which a test taker responds to or provides ambiguous, abstract, or
unstructured stimuli, often in the form of pictures or drawings.
While other projective tests, such as the Rorschach Technique and Thematic
Apperception Test, ask the test taker to interpret existing pictures, figure drawing tests
require the test taker to create the pictures themselves. In most cases, figure drawing tests
are given to children. This is because it is a simple, manageable task that children can
relate to and enjoy.
Some figure drawing tests are primarily measures of cognitive abilities or cognitive
development. In these tests, there is a consideration of how well a child draws and the
content of a child's drawing. In some tests, the child's self-image is considered through the
use of the drawings.
In other figure drawing tests, interpersonal relationships are assessed by having the child
draw a family or some other situation in which more than one person is present. Some tests
are used for the evaluation of child abuse. Other tests involve personality interpretation
through drawings of objects, such as a tree or a house, as well as people.
Finally, some figure drawing tests are used as part of the diagnostic procedure for specific
types of psychological or neuropsychological impairment, such as central nervous system
dysfunction or mental retardation.
Despite the flexibility in administration and interpretation of figure drawings, these tests
require skilled and trained administrators familiar with both the theory behind the tests and
the structure of the tests themselves. Interpretations should be made with caution and the
limitations of projective tests should be considered.
It is generally a good idea to use projective tests as part of an overall test battery. There is
little professional support for the use of figure drawing, so the examples that follow should
be interpreted with caution.

The House-Tree-Person (HTP) test, created by Buck in 1948, provides a measure of a selfperception and attitudes by requiring the test taker to draw a house, a tree, and a person.
The picture of the house is supposed to conjure the child's feelings toward his or her family.
The picture of the tree is supposed to elicit feelings of strength or weakness. The picture of
the person, as with other figure drawing tests, elicits information regarding the child's selfconcept.

The HTP, though mostly given to children and adolescents, is appropriate for anyone over
the age of three.

Evaluation of Indirect Methods

The major criticism of indirect methods is their lack of objectivity. Such methods are
unscientific and do not objectively measure attitudes in the same way as a Likert scale.
There is also the ethical problem of deception as often the person does not know that their
attitude is actually being studied when using indirect methods.
The advantages of such indirect techniques of attitude measurement are that they are less
likely to produce socially desirable responses, the person is unlikely to guess what is being
measured and behavior should be natural and reliable.

Further Information
Attitude Measurement
Likert Scale
Semantic Differential
Attitudes and behaviors: How Can We Be Controlled?

References
Osgood, C.E, Suci, G.

Didactic
What? Didactic teaching remains the pedagogical mainstay of many traditional classrooms and traditional teachers. It
is the pedagogy of instruction and immutable facts, of authority and telling, and of right and wrong answers it is

teacher-centred and values learners who sit still and listen quietly and attentively, passively accepting the teacher as
the knower and expert, both the source of knowledge and judge-jury of knowing. Students who succeed in this setting
have learned to memorise and repeat the important points of the lesson with little gloss or interpretation, mimicking
the words of the teacher. Students unable to sit still or who interrupt the lesson are banished to a corner or from the
room altogether perhaps with chagrin or relief, or some complex combination of the two these learners do not
belong in the learning or to the didactic milieu. Such learners may be categorised as deficit or dull unable to
concentrate or more systematically diagnosed with a learning disorder or disability. The socio-spatial arrangement of
the didactic classroom is a blackboard or whiteboard at the front of the room with children seated at desks in rows
and facing the front. Kalantzis and Cope offer:
Being didactic means to spell things out explicitly but perhaps a little too laboriously, or to present a view of whats
true or right or moral but in a way that might at times seem dogmatic. So, the teacher tells and the learner listens.
Didactic teaching turns on what the teacher says rather than what the learner does. The balance of agency weighs
heavily towards the teacher. The teacher is in command of knowledge. His or her mission is to transmit this
knowledge to learners, and learners, it is hoped, dutifully absorb the knowledge laid before them by the teacher.
The concept of the didactic teacher and the didactic ideal of passive and compliant students is exemplified in David
Milgrims Cows Cant Fly, an early-years picture book. The story is of a little boy whose hand drawn picture of two
cows flying through the air inspires a herd of cows to take flight. Milgrim draws the teacher, Ms. Crumb standing
beside her blackboard pointing with a stick at the lesson on the board. Chalked, double-spaced and underscored in
upper case is the word G R A V I T Y with three large arrows, pointing down at a chalk drawn cow. The word G R A V I
T Y dominates the blackboard.
Next to the chalk drawn cow is the label massive object with an arrow pointing sideways at the cow. The combination
of the elements in this graphic tableau leave the reader with no room for doubt as to the teachers view. A powerful
sense of didactic authority is achieved by the way in which Ms. Crumb, her pointer and her blackboard dominate the
composition, almost filling the double page spread.
The children are depicted as a row of partially seen heads at the bottom of the page looking up at the teacher, as
small-seated-children everywhere must do with their adult teachers. Milgrims teacher is dismissive of the idea that
cows can fly. She is shown examining her fingernails and grimacing, pointing at the blackboard with her stick. We are
told in the text Ms. Crumb said cows were far too fat; that facts were facts, and that was that. However Milgrim
completely undermines the teachers self assuredness and sense of didactic authority with a small flying cow seen
through the window behind her. The image captures in an essential way the disdain with which figures of didactic
authority treat ideas that are not consistent with the textbook or canon. The dominant figure of the teacher and her
blackboard are beyond the challenge of the submissive seated child. This tableau captures in exaggerated caricature
the didactic teacher.
Why? Didactic teaching is not really consistent with the pedagogy of Learning by Design. A range of pedagogies
knowledge processes are proposed for learning facts, concepts and theories pedagogies which promote more
active learning and greater agency for the learner.

Curriculum

What? The term curriculum has come to mean many things to many people. Some people have a straight-forward
content-view of curriculum the subject-matter to be taught or, what students will learn in a course of study. The idea
of curriculum as set out in Wikipedia the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. Kalantzis
and Cope define curriculum a little more broadly, as:
The consciously designed framework for learning a body of knowledge or a set of capacities over an extended period
of timefor instance, a terms program in history or two-year program in chemistry.
This definition implies that a curriculum is something formal, which is set out in a framework and that this contentbody-of-knowledge-capacities are the consequence of forethought and deliberate choice.
Others take a more expansive view of curriculum as encompassing everything a school does to bring about learning,
including the what and how of learning and teaching.

Objectives
TOPICS
A. Defining Targets for Attitude Performance
B. Creating a Survey
C. Displaying Survey Results
Assignments

Objectives
1. Define appropriate classroom targets for attitude assessments.
2. Differentiate among open-ended, multiple choice, and ranking surveys.
3. Construct a classroom survey.
4. Create graphs and tables to effectively convey survey results.

Overview
It's no secret that motivated, interested students are more likely to succeed in school than students
who are apathetic or depressed. In addition to measuring students' knowledge, reasoning,
performance, and products, teachers also need to be able to gauge students' attitudes, feelings, and
interests.
Surveys can be an effective means for assessing student attitudes. This lesson concentrates on
defining appropriate targets for assessing student dispositions, creating effective survey instruments,
and developing charts and graphs to display survey results.

A. Defining Targets for Attitude Assessments

"Students who have positive attitudes about the things they are learning, and feel a sense of internal control of their
own academic well-being are more likely to achieve at high levels than those who are negative, lack desire, and see
themselves as victims of a hostile school world" (Stiggins, 2001, p. 340). Although one cannot expect a classroom
survey to prevent a tragedy similar to Columbine, a survey can serve as a starting point toward helping teachers to
understand and motivate students.
Appropriate targets for assessing attitudes are aspects that are directly related to the classroom and the content area.
For example, your goal may be to determine if students feel they benefit by working in a group; which subject area
is their favorite; or if they enjoy working on the computer.
Inappropriate targets include issues that go beyond school -- questions about their home life, religion, or personal
self-concepts. These issues are best left for parents, counselors, and psychologists. If you're not sure whether or not a
specific question or domain is appropriate, ask your principal before surveying the students.

Try This
1. Think about the most recent survey that was conducted at your school. Reflect on these
questions:
o Why was the survey conducted?
o Was the reliability and validity of the survey checked?
o What was learned from the survey?
o What was changed at the school as a result of the survey?

B. Creating a Survey
Student attitudes and dispositions can be measured formally or informally. For example, teachers observe student
actions and expressions throughout the school day. Likewise, informal classroom interactions occur constantly, with
questions such as "Did you enjoy the movie?" "Why the sad face?" and "Do you think you'd like to be an astronaut?"
For this lesson, however, we will concentrate on a more formal format for attitude assessment -- a survey (also
referred to as a questionnaire).
Here are a few general guidelines for creating a survey.

Set your targets first -- make sure you know why you are conducting the survey.

If necessary, obtain clearance from your principal or school district.

Make sure students understand the intent of the survey.

Provide clear directions about how to respond to the survey.

Keep it short (generally one page is sufficient).

Use a clear and concise writing style, at the appropriate reading level.

Don't ask questions that will embarrass anyone or invade students' privacy.

Don't ask questions that are not related to your classroom.

Allow plenty of time to conduct the survey.

If it is an anonymous survey, make sure it stays that way.

Don't reward or punish students based on their responses.

Keep survey results private -- do not leave them in places where others might access them.

Surveys can consist of open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, or rating scales that allow students
to indicate how strongly they agree or disagree with specific statements. You can also use a combination of
approaches -- as long as it's clear to the student how to respond to the questions.
Open-Ended Surveys
Open-ended surveys contain questions, followed by an area for the student to fill in a response. This survey
type is generally used to obtain general, rather than specific, feedback from students. Writing open-ended
surveys is quite easy; however, compiling the results can be more difficult because these surveys don't use a
scale or ranking for options.
When writing questions for open-ended surveys, do not make the questions too general or ambiguous. For
example, suppose I would like to know your reaction to the online delivery of this course, and asked the
following question: "What do you think about the format of this class?" The problem is that "format" can be
ambiguous -- does it refer to online vs. classroom delivery; five lessons vs. ten; the structure of the lessons
and the use of Try Its; the evaluation requirements; or the timeframe? If you have a specific target (purpose)
for a question, you must make sure the question is clear.
Surveys can be conducted orally, on paper, or via a computer, and there are many tools available to help you
create surveys. For example, SurveyBuilder is a website that allows users to create free, online surveys.
Multiple-Choice Surveys
Is you have specific questions, with specific answer choices, the best approach might be to create a multiplechoice survey. For example, if I wanted to know which of the lessons in the course you felt was the most
relevant or difficult or time-consuming or meaningless, I could construct a multiple choice question, with the
lesson titles as the alternatives. For example:
Which lesson did you find most relevant for your classroom?
A. Basic Concepts

B. Selected Response Assessments

C. Constructed Response Assessments
D. Performance Assessment
E. Classroom Interactions
F. Attitude Surveys
Ranking Scale Surveys
Ranking scales (often referred to as Likert scales) are very common on surveys. Basically, a statement is
presented, then the student can respond on a scale that indicates how much (or little) they agree with the
statement (see Figure 2).

Try This
1. Review the Student Survey
o How many negative statements can you find?
o Why do you think they used a scale with five points instead of four?
o How would you classify the survey (open-ended, multiple-choice, or ranking scale)?
o What benefits did this teacher obtain from the attitude assessments?
o What items do you think should be added to the survey?

C. Displaying Survey Results

After you conduct an attitudinal assessment, you need to examine the results, and, if appropriate, make changes in
your classroom management, instruction, or interactions. In other words, if you are not going to act upon the results,
then don't conduct the survey.
There are many ways that survey data can be displayed and/or reported. The most common approach is to compile
the responses and create charts or graphs that can quickly convey the information.
For example, the University of Texas administered Attitude Toward Science Class surveys to over 400 students in
6th, 7th, and 8th grade. Looking strictly at the averages (means), it's difficult to get a picture of whether the attitudes
were improving or not.
For example, look at #23: "Science is one of my favorite classes."

Sixth Grade
Question

23. Science is one of my

favorite classes.

Seventh Grade

Eighth Grade

Pretest
Mean

Posttest
Mean

Pretest
Mean

Posttest
Mean

Pretest
Mean

Posttest
Mean

3.3

2.7

3.6

3.8

3.1

3.0

By displaying the same data in bar charts as illustrated below, it

is much easier to see that the attitude of the 7th grades
improved over the year, while the 6th and 8th grades became
more negative.

Try This

Experiment with creating graphs and tables using Excel, PowerPoint, or the
online program, Create a Graph.