SPURTHY COLLEGE OF

NURSING
BANGALORE
NURSING EDUCATION
ASSIGNMENT
ON
TOOLS FOR EVALUATION

ATTITUDE SCALE

Submitted to:
Submitted by : S SREENIVASON
MSc. Nursing 1st year,
SPURTHY CON, BANGALORE

INTRODUCTION :
Marketing research generally deals with the behaviour of the
consumers. .A company which is able to sell its product/services
must be viewed by customers as pocessing a favourable attitude
towards it. It is therefore very important for the organization to
understand and measure the attitudes of its customers towards its
products and services. This is because if the customers have an
unfavourable attitude or/a poor image about the company, it will not
be able to sustain for a long time. It is not only essential for the
company to ensure that consumers have a favourable attitude
towards its product, but also to anticipate their future preferences.
The question therefore arises how to measure attitude towards the
products of the company. Measuring attitude is 'a very difficult task
because we cannot measure product or customers but we can
measures the opinion! perceptions of the customers towards the
product. In other words, attitude is inferred and not directly
observed. A study of consumer behaviour and likes and dislikes of
the customers play a very important role in understanding their
perceptions and thereby inferring their attitudes towards the
product. This may be of help in estimating how much of the product
a company will be able to sell in future.

DEFINITION :

Attitude may be defined as the degree of positive or negative affect

associated with some psychological object. It is a pre-disposition of
the individuals to evaluate some 53 object or symbol or aspect of
his world in a favourable or unfavourable manner. Attitude
comprises of three components.

1. A cognitive component - a person's belief or information about

the object.

2. An affective component - a person's feeling about the object

such as "like" or "dislike", `"good" or " bad"

3. A behavioural component - a person's readiness to respond

behaviourally to the object.

The study and measurement of attitudes is important since it

is assumed that there is a relationship between attitude and
behaviour. The research, however, indicates that such a relationship
hold more at aggregate level than at the individual level. Attitude
may only be one of the factors influencing behaviour - there could
be other factors beside attitude which may be more powerful in
influencing behaviour. For example, an individual having a
favourable attitude towards a product may not buy it because of
economic considerations. For the purpose of marketing decision the
attitude behaviour relationship relates to measuring of cognitive
and affective components and being able to predict future
behaviour.

LEVELS OF MEASUREMENT :
Measurement means the assignments of numbers to objects or
persons to represent quantities of their attributes. The assignment
of numbers is done according to some rule. The attribute of person
could include his income, preference, religion, social class, attitude
etc. Similarly we measure a product's speed, colour, size, flavour
etc. It is the characteristic of the buyer or the product which is
measured and not, the person or product itself. There are four types
of scales used in marketing research to measure attitude towards a
particular product/service.

These are as follows:

1. Nominal Scale

2. Ordinal Scale

3. Interval Scale

4. Ratio Scale

1 Nominal Scale :
In this type of measurement numbers are used to label
persons, objects or events. For example, the variable sex may be
categorized as male or female. One may assign a number 1 to male
and 0 to female. It only helps us to identify that whenever number 1
is used we are talking about males and 0 in case of females.
Similarly if the units in the population is to be classified according to
religion viz. Hindu, Muslin, Sikh and Christian; one may label Hindu
as 101, Muslim as 102, Sikh as 103 and Christian as 104. The
numbers, here, have no meaning in the sense that the category
which is assigned a higher number is in no way more important (or
bigger) than the category which is assigned a lower number.
 The classification to identify objects, events and person is also
done on the basis of the letters of english alphabets. Using the
example mentioned in the preceding paragraph one could have
labeled males as A and females as B. Similar procedure may be
used for another type of classification. However, the classification
should be done in such a way that groups are mutually exclusive
and collectively exhaustive.

The only mathematical operation performed on nominally

measured data is the count in each category. Numbers assigned to
represent categories (e.g. 1 for male and 0 for female) cannot be
added, subtracted, multiplied or divided. We can only say (if sample
comprises of 100 respondents) that there are 70 males and 30
females. Also we can say that the sample comprises of say 40%
Hindus, 20% Sikhs, 30% Muslims and 10% Christians. The statistical
procedures applicable for nominal scale measurement are Mode and
Chi-Square.

2. Ordinal Scale:

A significant amount of consumer oriented research relies on ordinal

measurement. Here numbers, letters or any other symbols are used
to rank items. Ordinal scale tells us whether an object or event has
more or less of a characteristic than some other object or event.
Unfortunately this scale doesnot indicate how much more and how
much less we have of the characteristics the objects or events
pocess. For example, we may be examining the marks in Marketing
for 60 students in a class. Assume that the highest score in the class
is 92, the second highest 63 and the third highest 60. We rank the
person getting 92 marks as 1, 63 marks as 2 and 60 marks as 3.
However the difference between the marks of first and second rank
is not the same as the difference in the marks of students obtaining
second and third rank.

The common mathematical operations like addition,

subtraction, multiplication and division cannot be used with ranked
data. However, statistical procedure based on interpretation of
"greater than" or " less than" are permissible: The statistical
methods applicable with ordinal data are percentiles, median and
rank order correlation.
3. Interval Scale :

Interval scale responses are more powerful than ordinal scale

responses. They not only pocess the properties of ordinal and
nominal scale measurement but also ,he strength of the equality of
differences between ranks. For example, the consumers may be
asked the following question.

How important is price to you while buying furniture?

One may note that very important is assigned a number

(1) , important as

(2) and so on and lastly very unimportant is assigned a number

(5) . What is assumed here is that the respondent is able to reply

on a continuum scale and the difference between any two responses
can be meaningfully interpreted,

The general mathematical form of interval scale is given by the

equation. Y = a+ bX Here we are considering an arbitrary zero point
or starting point and therefore the division of two responses have no
meaningful interpretation.

Instead of giving number 1 to very important and 5 to very

unimportant in the above example, if the numbering starts from 0 to
4 the picture would look like as shown below in Scales A and B.

We may assume the first respondent ticks unimportant and the

second respondent ticks important while answering the question.

Therefore the ratio of the scale values in the first case is 4/2 =2 and
if we use Scale B, the ratio is 3/3 =1.

Although the differences in the both cases is same and equals two,
the ratios are different in both cases and have no meaningful
interpretation. The statistical procedure applicable in this case are
range, mean, standard deviation and product moment correlation.
However, all the statistical procedures applicable for ordinal and
nominal scale measurements can also be used in this case.
4. Ratio Scale :

Ratio scale measurements are the most powerful measurement

discussed so far as they pocess all the properties of the
measurement scales which we have discussed .Ratios of the
numbers on these scales have meaningful interpretation. They
possess an unambiguous starting point.

The mathematical form of the measurement is written as Y=bX

The examples of ratio scale measurement are Income, Distance

travelled from home to workplace, Height, Weight, Density etc. The
statistical methods applicable for this type of measurement are
geometric mean, harmonic mean, coefficient of variation etc. Also
all the statistical procedures ,described for the remaining type of
measurements are also applicable under this case.

Scales Of Measurement Scale Permissible Statistics

1. Nominal : Mode

2. Ordinal : Median, Percentile & Rank Order Correlation

3. Interval : Mean , Average deviation, & Standard deviation

4. Ratio : Geometric Mean & Harmonic mean

THE SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL SCALE

The term Semantic differential scale refers to any collection of
rating scales anchored by bipolar adjectives. It is a very flexible
approach to obtaining measures of attitudes. The, object that is
rated is called the "concept" and almost anything can be rated
including family planning, cosmetics, Shrikhand, political parties,
etc.
107nally, a semantic differential scale is based on a seven-
point rating scale for each of a number of attributes relating to the
research topic. The extreme point represent the bipolar adjectives
with the central category representing neutral. In the semantic
differential scale only the extremes have names. The in-between
categories have either blank spaces or sometimes a number. Some
examples of the scale are as
follows
Good ……………………………………………………………Bad
Honest ………………………………………………………….Dishonest
Progressive ………………………………………………… Behind the
times
The preparation of a semantic differential scale for a study requires
expressing the things that could he used to describe the object, and
thus serve as a bets for attitude formation, in terms of positive and
negative statements. The negative phrase is sometimes put on the
left side of the scale and sometimes on the right. This prevents a
respondent with a positive attitude from simply checking either the
left or right hand sides without reading the describing words.

The scale can be used for a variety of purposes. 11 can be

used to check whether a respondent has a favourable attitude
towards the object, which out of three neighbourhood banks has the
most appealing profile for housewives, etc.
It is possible to assign points to individual cells in the scale.
Then one could arrive at the scores for comparisons of different
objects. The Figure 1 gives an example based on image study of
three neighbourhood banks among a sample of 100 housewives.

SUMMATIVE MODELS: THE LIKERT SCALE

The summative models assume that the individual items in the scale
are monotonically related to the underlying attributes and a
summation of the item scores is related linearly to the attitude. In a
summative model, one obtains the total score by adding scores on
individual items. For the statements that imply negative attitudes,
the scoring is reversed. The scales allow an expression of the
intensity of feeling. These scales are also called Likert scales. Here,
instead of having just "agree" and "disagree" in the scale, we can
have intensities varying from "strongly agree" to "strongly
disagree".

The scale construction consists of the following steps:

 Write a large number of statements that-concern the particular

attitudinal object being investigated. For instance one may be
looking at the role of voluntary agencies in providing health
services. in rural areas. Most of these statements should either
be moderately positive or moderately negative. Neutral items
are generally avoided in these scales. The items should be
evenly divided between positive and negative statements.

 Administer the pool of statements on a group of respondents

who are similar to the population on whom the scale will be
used. For example, if we want to study the attitude of
housewives the pool should be administered on a group of
housewives with similar background to our final population.
 Assign scale values to the degrees of agreement or
disagreement with each item. The particular values may differ
from one researcher to another. Sometimes one may adopt the
values 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and sometimes +2, +1, 0, -1, -2. For
negative items the directions should be reversed.

 Calculate a total attitude score for each respondent using the

same scaling procedure. The distribution of total, scores is then
used to refine the list of items. This step is called item analysis.

 Item analysis : Analyse the responses and select for the scale
those items which most clearly differentiate between the highest
and lowest scores. This can be done by dividing the respondents
into the high and the low scoring categories.The high scorers
can be assumed to be with favourable attitudes and the low
scorers can be taken as having the least favourable attitudes. If
the statement is a good one, then it is safe to expect that the
mean score for the favourable group would be greater than the
mean score for the unfavourable group. If the mean scores
across the two groups, for an item, are found nearly equal or
equal, then that statement can be dropped from the scale. One
can take the high group as the top twenty-rave per cent of all
total scores and the low group as the lowest twenty-five per
cent. Alternatively we can divide the respondents into Attitude
Measurement and quartiles and compute the median score for
each item for the highest twenty-five per cent States and the
lowest twenty-five per cent of scale scores.

 The statements remaining in the pruned fast are randomly_

ordered on the scale form. The positive and negative ones are
mixed.

 The scale is now administered on the respondents who are asked

to indicate their degree of agreement with the items. A
respondent's total score is generated as the sum of his scores
on each statement.

SELECTION OF AN APPROPRIATE ATTITUDE

MEASUREMENT SCALE

We have examined in the earlier sections a number of different

techniques which are available for the measurement of attitudes.
Each has some strengths and some weaknesses. Almost every
technique can be used for the measurement of any component of
attitudes. But at the same time all techniques are not suitable for all
purposes. Then selection of the scale depends on the stage and the
size of the research project. The costs of developing and
implementing the instrument, reliability and validity of the
instrument and the statistical analysis necessary.

Generally, Thurstone's scale, Q-sort and the Semantic

differential scale are preferred for preliminary investigation. The
Likert scale is used for item analysis. For specific attributes the
semantic differential scale is very appropriate.

Overall the semantic differential is simple in concept and

results obtained are comparable with more complex, one
dimensional methods. Hence, it is widely used.

LIMITATIONS OF ATTITUDE MEASUREMENT

SCALES

The main limitation of these tools is the emphasis on describing

attitudes rather than predicting behaviour. This is primarily because
of a lack of models that describe the role of attitudes in behaviour

SUMMARY

We have briefly examined the role of attitude measurement and

scales in managerial research. We started by looking at the type of
managerial decisions which need quantification of attitudinal data.
Subsequently, we defined some key terms such as attributes,
beliefs and attitudes. This was followed by a discussion on the
critical
issues in attitude measurement. Then the different types of scales,
viz., nominal, ordinal, and interval, which feature in this field, were
described. This was followed by five important tools/scales of
attitude measurement, viz., Guttman, Thurstone's equal-appearing
interval, Semantic Differential, Likert's and the Q-sort technique.
Simultaneously, the steps in scale construction and their use were
also highlighted. A brief discussion of multidimensional scaling
followed. Finally, the issues of the selection of an appropriate
attitude measurement scale and the limitations of these research
tools were discussed.