The Measurement of the Social Attitudes

Abstract

Problem. The purposes of this study are (1) to measure the social attitude of Japanese students and to estimate their attitude valuse and (2) to explain by the method of factor analysis the factorial orientation of those various social attitudes in the personality. We are going to take up (1) in this paper. Procedure. The attitude scales of fifteen kinds prepared by L. L. Thurstone's equalappearing interval method were used. They include the following scales: (a) American (b) Russian (c) Chinese (d) Korean (e) war-A-form (f) war B-form (g) Criminal punishment A-form (h) Criminal punishment B-form (i) Capital punishment (j) Friendly relations between man and woman (k) Prohibition (l) Sports (m) Movie (n) Marxism, and (p) Christianity. Measurement. 781 students (385 males and 396 females) were randomly selected from fourteen universities and one high school. About one hour was allowed them to answer a queationnaire of 15 sheets. The period of this investigation was from October, 1949 to March, 1950. Results and interpretation. A. The examination of the attitude scale. The discrimination power in each item of each scale was examined by the method of bi-searial correlation and was found to be statistically significant. B. The mean attitude values and the standard deviation of all subjects. C. The differences in the attitude values in the following groups. 1. The differences between the male students and the female students.: The differences of the mean attitude values between the male students and the female students were statistically significant except for (d) Korean, (k) Prohibition, (m) Movie, and (n) Marxism. The male students were more favorable for (j) Friendly relations between man and woman (l) Sports. The female students were favorable for (a) American, (e) (f) War. And the choice ratio in each item was compared. 2. The differences between urban and rural districts.: All subjects were divided into two groups, the urban and the rural. And their mean attitude values were compared. But the differences between them except for (m) Movie were not significant. 3. The differences in ages. The subjects were divided into three groups: A group (under 19 years old), B group (from 20 years old to 23 years old), C group (above 24 years old). The differences were found to be statistically significant between B and C group and A group for (b) Russion. B and C groups were more unfavorable than A group. Such a tendency was also found for (k) Prohibition and (1) Sports; but for (n) Marxism, the reverse tendency was found. © 1953, The Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.