Measuring Attitudes in Test‐Alien Cultures: When Illiteracy and Unfamiliarity Do Not Matter

Abstract

This study reports the construction of an attitude scale called a ''Shah attitude scale.'' This scale overcomes the problems of scale construction and attitude measurement in test-alien cultures peculiar to Western scales. The major problems with the use of these scales are the non-correspondence of the samples used in scale construction and attitude measurement, difficulty of their use with the illiterate and rural samples, unfamiliarity of their verbal character and the response modality. Our scale is simple to construct and can be easily used with every section of society. Its conceptualization and development is based upon the agreed upon bipolar definition of attitude and the ideas derived from wellknown attitude scales. The scale is based upon trait adjectives and can be used easily in cross-cultural attitudinal studies.

Does Informal Knowledge Sharing Breed Innovation in Industrial Clusters?

“…Many of the problems were due to the insufficient sophistication of the respondents. After a literature review on scale development and applications for respondents that are illiterate or have low levels of education, we decided to follow the procedures explained in Shah (1999) for revising the rating scale. Consequently, we came up with five phrases that correspond to the five rating levels in our product, process, and marketing innovation measurement scales.…”