Record Details
Scales for measuring attitudes toward money
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Scales for measuring attitudes toward money |
| Names |
Miller, Dorothy Sherrill
(creator) Wells, Helen L. (advisor) |
| Date Issued | 1965-05-11 (iso8601) |
| Note | Graduation date: 1965 |
| Abstract | The purpose of this study was to construct a measuring instrument involving attitudes toward money. Seven scales were developed using the Likert method of summated ratings. Five of these were shown to be acceptably reliable for use in measuring attitudes of groups similar to the standardization group of 4-H youth 15 and 16 years of age. Acceptably reliable scales include those entitled Satisfaction and Happiness, Values and Goals, Democracy, Budget, and Action Orientation. Scales shown inadequate were Saving and Felt Poverty. The acceptable scales provide a means for measuring verbally expressed attitudes on a positive-negative continuum. Responses from subjects which support operational definitions of the scales are classed as ''positive attitudes"; those which conflict are classed as "negative attitudes." Items were placed into experimental scales on the basis of agreement among three judges who were specialists in family life, home management, and research methods. Items were pretested on youth groups and revised. The revised experimental instrument containing 85 attitude hems was administered to 225 youth in the 1964 session of Oregon State University 4-H Summer School. Five possible response categories provided measures of degree of agreement with the items by the respondent. These were strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree. Two types of data were secured from the subjects. One of these, background data, identifies the group on which the instrument was tested in regard to age, sex, place of residence, and social position. A summary of background data shows that 83.6 percent of the subjects were girls and 16.4 percent were boys. Subjects 15 years of age made up 44.9 percent of the sample, and subjects 16 years of age made up 55.1 percent. Thirty and seven-tenths percent of the boys and girls live in cities or towns, 48.0 percent on farms or ranches, and 21.3 percent in the country, but not farming. Hollingshead's Two Factor Index of Social Position, based on education and occupation of the head of the household, was used, with minor revision, to classify the subjects into five social positions. The distribution was only slightly skewed from a normal distribution. All other data were provided by responses to the 85 attitude items. Items in each scale were subjected to three tests of discriminatory power followed by a split-half test of reliability using the Pearson Product-Moment Coefficient of Correlation corrected by the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula. Five of the seven scales showed acceptable reliability for use in measuring group attitudes. These were Democracy .7632, Values and Goals .7352, Satisfaction and Happiness .7082, Budget .6649, and Action Orientation .5763. The study was concerned with contort validity. It deals only with verbal behavior in which subjects declare themselves in favor of some statements and opposed to others. No attempt was made to correlate the responses with overt nonverbal acts. Teachers, 4-H leaders, and other youth group leaders may use these scales to assist in selection of learning experiences about money and to measure change in attitudes after these learning experiences. They are also useful as means for prompting discussion in a learning situation. Suggestions are made for further research which would make the scales suitable for measuring individual, as well as group, attitudes. Need for establishing reliability of the scales with other groups, such as college students and married couples at all stages of the life cycle, is indicated. Additional research in an effort to show the scales reliable as predictive tools for more overt forms of behavior is also proposed. |
| Genre | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Topic | Attitude (Psychology) |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/48552 |
