Measurement of Social Attitudes: A New Approach

Abstract

The deficiencies of currently used methods of measuring personality through social attitudes (particularly the F- and D-scales) are noted, and a solution sought in terms of some hypothesized reasons for their failure. It is argued that most of the difficulties encountered by these tests can be traced to the directional-statement format of their items. Therefore, a new measure (the Conservatism Scale) was designed with a short non-directional item format based on “catch-phrases” representing familiar controversial issues. Apart from its obvious advantage in economy, the new scale is shown to be internally consistent, stable, free of acquiescence response bias, less susceptible to social desirability effects, and highly satisfactory in terms of construct validity. Evidence so far available suggests that the approach adopted in the C-scale provides, possibly for the first time, a measure of attitude content that is free of the confounding effects of item context.