The failing measurement of attitudes: How semantic determinants of individual survey responses come to replace measures of attitude strength

21Citations
Citations of this article
29Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

This article is free to access.

Abstract

The traditional understanding of data from Likert scales is that the quantifications involved result from measures of attitude strength. Applying a recently proposed semantic theory of survey response, we claim that survey responses tap two different sources: a mixture of attitudes plus the semantic structure of the survey. Exploring the degree to which individual responses are influenced by semantics, we hypothesized that in many cases, information about attitude strength is actually filtered out as noise in the commonly used correlation matrix. We developed a procedure to separate the semantic influence from attitude strength in individual response patterns, and compared these results to, respectively, the observed sample correlation matrices and the semantic similarity structures arising from text analysis algorithms. This was done with four datasets, comprising a total of 7,787 subjects and 27,461,502 observed item pair responses. As we argued, attitude strength seemed to account for much information about the individual respondents. However, this information did not seem to carry over into the observed sample correlation matrices, which instead converged around the semantic structures offered by the survey items. This is potentially disturbing for the traditional understanding of what survey data represent. We argue that this approach contributes to a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved in survey responses. In turn, this could help us make better use of the data that such methods provide.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Arnulf, J. K., Larsen, K. R., Martinsen, Ø. L., & Egeland, T. (2018). The failing measurement of attitudes: How semantic determinants of individual survey responses come to replace measures of attitude strength. Behavior Research Methods, 50(6), 2345–2365. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0999-y

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free