attitude scale

attitude scale

the most common way of measuring attitudes, which relies on assumed consistency between attitudes and behavioural responses. Verbal statements about the attitude object, e.g. the monarchy or uncontrolled immigration, are rated according to the (degree of) agreement or disagreement felt by the respondent. Semantic differential scales allow subjects to rate the attitude object on a number of different bipolar dimensions, e.g. good-bad. There are different methods of constructing these scales, depending on whether they are based on the subjective judgement of many subjects (LIKERT SCALE), on the ratings of ‘judges’ (Thurstone and Chave, 1929), or on response pattern analysis (GUTTMAN SCALE). See also SCALING, POLITICAL ATTITUDES.