The indirect assessment of social attitudes.

Abstract

In the problem of assessing social attitudes, there is a very real need for instruments which do not destroy the natural form of the attitude in the process of describing it. There are also situations in which one would like to assess "prejudice" without making respondents selfconscious or aware of the intent of the study. At the present time there are few if any indirect tests which could confidently be used for either of these purposes. There are, none the less, a considerable number of techniques that have been partially explored and validated. It is the purpose of this paper to survey such techniques and to present a point of view with regard to the problem of indirect measurement.Current interest on the part of social psychologists in the indirect assessment of attitudes is perhaps primarily an aspect of the larger projective test movement in personality study. However, as will be seen in the course of this survey, there has been an interest in this approach from the very first efforts in attitude measurement (81), anticipating by some ten years the current interest in "projective techniques."The terms "indirect" and "projective" have been used to refer to both disguised, and to non-structured measurement efforts. Using these two terms alone, one could distinguish four types of tests:1. Non-disguised-sifuctufed: the classic direct attitude tests of Thurstone (78), Likert (49), et al.2. Non-disguised-non-structured: the free-response interview and questionnaire approaches, the biographical and essay studies.3. Disguised-non-structured: the typical "projective" techniques. 4. Disguised-structured: tests which approximate the objective testing of attitudes.

Is the Implicit Association Test a Valid and Valuable Measure of Implicit Consumer Social Cognition?

“…It determines a participant's knowledge of a topic and has clearly defined success criteria. Because a par ticipant's attitude toward a topic should guide the selection and retention of knowledge, this test provides an implicit measure of that attitude (Campbell, 1950;Churchill, 1995). Information tests are robust to social desirability if the pur pose can be disguised (Lemon, 1973) but may be confounded by need for cognition (Haugvedt, Petty, & Cacioppo, 1992).…”

“…Generally, implicit measures can be categorized as either disguised-unstruc tured or disguised-structured (Campbell, 1950). They are disguised because participants are aware they are participat ing in a study but are typically unaware of what is truly being assessed.…”

Desirability Judgments and Self‐reports as Predictors of Social Behavior1

“…Considerable evidence exists that many self-report scales are, indeed, contaminated by response styles (e.g., Chapman & Bock, 1958;Jackson & Messick, 1962;Messick, 1962;Peabody, 1961). The operation of such stylistic tendencies as acquiescence, desirability bias, and defensiveness in judgments of desirability or favorability has not been previously investigated, and it has been assumed that such judgments are relatively free of such distorting influences as they usually affect questionnaires (Cook & Selltiz, 1964;Jackson, 1961Jackson, , 1964, partly because the purpose of such indirect measures as judgments is disguised, making them less susceptible to conscious or unconscious distortion by subjects (Campbell, 1950; Cattell, 1957; Cook & Selltiz, 1964;Jackson, 1961Jackson, , 1964Scheier, 1958;Webb et al, 1966;Weschler & Bernberg, 1950).Although the relevant data are still inadequate, one plausible conjecture is that the response style correlations with the self-report scales are predominantly artifactual and those with the judgment scales are largely substantive. Such an interpretation of the correlations with acquiescence is consistent with the finding that the self-report scales with minimally related halves correlated with the acquiescence measures, but the judgment scales whose halves were relatively uncorrelated did not.…”

The Influence of Knowledge, Skills, Attitude and Organization Commitment Using Ethical Climate as A Moderator Towards Ethical Decision Making of Accountants in Malaysia: A Conceptual Paper

“…This means that Individual tends to take action on what they feel is right. Similarly, Eagly and Chaiken [66]; Fuson [67]; and Campbell [68];defined attitude as the way the individual reacts to the situation. Accountants and Auditors need to have a proper auditing attitude because public is doubtful on the validity of the disclosure on the Audited Report.…”