Measuring locus of control: A critique of general, children's, health‐ and work‐related locus of control questionnaires

Abstract

This paper attempts a critical review not so much of the concept of locus of control as the plethora of unidimensional or sphere-specific measures that have been developed in the past 25 years. After a brief history of the development of the concept of locus of control, various oft-repeated and some new criticisms are considered. One frequent response to problems associated with the original concept and scale has been to develop new psychometrically validated, sphere- or topic-specific measures. These are tabulated and reviewed under five headings: measures (either multidimensional or sphere-specific) of the general concept of locus of control; measures devised specifically for children and adolescents; measures that have concentrated on aspects of mental and physical health; work, career and economic locus of control measures; and finally, measures which have extended the locus of control concept into other areas. The advantages and disadvantages of this proliferation of measures is considered in some detail, especially the issue of incremental validity, and recommendations are made for future work in this area.

Cárie precoce: influência de variáveis sócio-comportamentais e do locus de controle da saúde em um grupo de crianças de Araraquara, São Paulo, Brasil

“…De forma simplificada, indivíduos com predomínio do locus de controle interno acreditam que a causa de muitos fenô-menos encontra-se no próprio sujeito inserido, ou seja, nele próprio. Por outro lado, aqueles nos quais há o predomínio do locus de controle externo colocam a origem das causas em outras pessoas, entidades, forças do meio ambiente, acaso, sorte, desejo de Deus, ou seja, todas fora de seu controle 7,8 .…”

Work locus of control and its relationship to health and job satisfaction from a gender perspective

“…Locus of control is one of the most cited constructs and Rotter's I-E (internalexternal) scale is widely used in different studies (Antonovsky, 1991;Furnham & Steele, 1993). Locus of control can be viewed either as a uni-or multidimensional construct.…”

Locus of control and its relationship with some social-demographic factors

“…In contrast to Rotter, other researchers (Eisner, 1995;Furnham & Steele, 1993) from a social-psychological direction discuss the locus of control through attribution theory. According to this theory, we attribute to other persons certain characteristics or motives and this makes us more confident that we know better our partners.…”

“…Rotter`s theory accounts for impending events exactly because of prognostic purpose in his elaboration. The attribution theory is about past events (Furnham & Steele, 1993). Аs reported by Eisner (1995), the attribution of success or failure depends on locus of control that is separated by its personal characteristics into inner and external, and by its permanence into stable/typical and unstable/by chance, and by the pervasiveness into global /specific.…”