The self-concepts of 406 grade school and junior high school students were assessed in this study. It was found that children and adolescents who had experienced father loss through divorce and whose mothers hadnot remarried demonstrated significantly lower self-concepts than those who were from intact families. Interestingly, children and adolescents who had experienced father loss through divorce and whose mothers had remarried were found to possess lower self-concepts than those from intact families, but this difference was not statistically significant. These findings were found across grade levels (i.e., grades 3-8) and for both sexes. The importance of these findings are discussed in light of current trends toward an increasing divorce rate and an increasing presence of stepfathers in American families.
The Personal Attribute Inventory is a scale that should prove applicable to a broad range of interpersonal assessments. There are 50 positive and 50 negative adjectives from Gough's (1952) Adjective Check List from which subjects are instructed to select 30 which are most descriptive of the target group or person in question. Using the term "Negroes" as the target stimulus on three different occasions, this scale's test-retest reliabilities were .904, .94, and .95. Its criterion-related validity with the Westie scale was .46 ( p < .001) and with the Ewens checklist was .55 and .66 ( # < .01, < .001, respectively). Further application is needed to assess the usefulness of this procedure.The fields of sociology and social psychology are replete with attitude scales of questionable qualiry. The typical procedure has been to create a scale for each study or to modify an existing scale in some convenient but unsystematic way, thus destroying whatever reliability and validity has been established. This procedure tends to raise questions about huge masses of important research. For example, virtually all of the research on prejudice has used weak, poorly validated, and unreliable scales. Part of this difficulty lies in the conceptualization of attitudes.While attitudes have been defined by some as having a cognitive, affective, and behavioral component (e.) view affect as the central feature, with affect generally being defined as an evaluative stance, e.g., good-bad, hate-love, attraction-repulsion Even when these writers include other components in their conceptualizations, affect remains central. A researcher attempting to select a scale is never sure of the best conceptualization for what he is measuring because the scale developer does not supply him with the underlying rationale. The Personal Attribute Inventory was designed strictly as an evaluative-affective measure excluding as much as possible cognitions and behavioral implications, but it is not a physiological measure.The plague on the social sciences of scales with poor quality is related to an emphasis on narrow uses. A scale developed to tap attitudes toward a 'This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association which was held in Houston, Texas, April, 1975. 'Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas S. Parish. Department of Apdied Be---havibral Studies; Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, dklahbma 74074. T h e investigators gratefully acknowledge the assistance and support they received from the College of Education and the Research Foundation at Oklahoma Scate University.
A total of 738 children in grades 5-8 from 14 school districts in Kansas voluntarily evaluated themselves, their mothers, and their fathers. The results of this study indicated that children from intact families tended to evaluate themselves and their parents more positively than those from divorced families. Children from remarried families, as opposed to children from nonremarried families, were found to evaluate themselves somewhat more positively, their fathers significantly more positively, and their mothers less favorably. Explanations are offered to account for these findings.
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