This is an extension to the equal-appearing intervals scaling. It tries to statistically place items on a continuum instead of relying on subjective answers given by judges. It uses the number of times different judges rate a statement to develop the rank order for the scales.
I will be focusing on using the Thurstone method to develop my attitude measurement. The Thurstone procedure for scaling attitudes has been developed out of the principles of psychophysics. While the individualisation of the attitude has been documented elsewhere it is notable that Thurstone recognised the potential of a metric scaling of attitudes which give descriptions of and comparisons between social categories. He outlined four uses of mean values on a scale:
- The average or mean attitude of a particular individual on the issue at stake.
- The range of opinion that the individual is willing to accept or tolerate.
- The relative popularity of each attitude of the scale for a designated group as shown by the frequency distribution for that group
- The degree of homogeneity or heterogeneity on the issues as shown by the spread or dispersion of its frequency distribution.
The first two uses focus on the individual and the second two on the social representations. Commenting on a comparative judgemental task Thurstone says that the results describe as much a group of respondents as the group’s view of the stimulus. Scale values, he argued, could also be used to compare several different groups in their attitudes on a disputed issue.
I will be applying my discussion on the topic of legalisation of cannabis. This issue is and always has been debated by almost everyone who knows about drugs. Attitudes of people have changed either for or against legalisation and I will hope to devise a scale which measures these attitudes. As stated earlier, I will be basing my scale on the Thurstone method as this is seen to be more reliable than the Likert scale.
When Olympic officials decided to give snowboarder Ross Rebagliati (Olympic Gold Medallist 1998) his gold medal back, the cheers drowned out the boos. It was a minor scandal involving a minor sport, but it spoke volumes about the world's shifting relationship with its favourite illicit drug. Marijuana. A decade ago, Rebagliati would have been ostracized regardless of whether cannabis was on the list of his sport's banned substances. What has changed today is that our attitudes towards illegal drugs are becoming more sophisticated and discriminating. After thirty years of research into the harmful effects of cannabis, there can be no hidden dangers left to discover. We know that it is plain nonsense to regard cannabis as a performance-enhancing drug, just as it is a myth to think the substance rots the brain or leads inexorably to harder substances.
The issue of cannabis legalization has been debated ever since the substance was made illegal on April 14, 1937. The issue remains as alive and debatable today as it has ever been. The public’s growing fascination and acceptance of this plant adds fuel to the fire of the controversy. There are many questions that still need to be answered in the realm of cannabis legalization, and pressure to find those answers is another thing that fuels the debate over decriminalisation. The pressure for legislation reform is not specific to any demographic location. All ages, races, and sexes have argued it. There are those that argue for the medical legalization, economical legalization, and of course, recreational legalization. Those that lobby for reform carry large amounts of statistical evidence and personal testimony to show the beneficial elements of this plant. The push for marijuana reform has come from doctors and lawyers as well as skateboard toting teens.
Those that push for the decriminalisation of marijuana base their arguments on a number of proven facts, refuted opposing arguments, and positive personal experiences. There are some groups that support the removal of all penalties for the private possession and responsible use of marijuana by adults, cultivation for personal use, and the casual non-profit transfers of small amounts. They back their arguments with claims like: Cannabis has proven to be addictive to a very small portion of the overall user population, and when put in contrast with other addictive over-the-counter drugs (such as alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine), the addictive potential of cannabis is far below those accepted levels. Marijuana supporters also argue that it’s been in use (documented) for 5,000 years and during that span there hasn’t been one single documented overdose case. Still others argue for the medicinal use of marijuana.
The anti-marijuana campaigner’s project that the legalization of marijuana will lead to a breakdown of moral fibres, which leads to the legalization of other drugs, which leads to increased crime, which leads to tremendous amounts of money spent, which leads to distrust of the legal system, which leads to anarchy. They argue, “our society couldn’t survive and function with the legalization of this drug.” The fallacy is represented by the anti-legalisationist's in the fact that evidence does prove that societies can thrive and prosper with marijuana being legal.
Using the Thurstone method, below I have created a number of statements (items) to do with the issue of legalisation of cannabis. I have divided the items below into four categories (factors) – Value Judgement, Attitudes towards experimentation with drugs, Legalisation of drug use and Attitudes of others toward drug use. Each item is to be read by the respondent and then the respondent will have to give the statement a rating out of 11. Giving the item a mark of 11 will indicate that the respondent strongly agrees with the statement, on the other hand, giving a mark of 1 would indicate that the respondent very strongly disagrees with the statement.
Factor 1: Value Judgement -
- Drug use leads to delinquency
- Drugs lead to moral deterioration
- Drug use expresses irresponsibility
- Drug users should not be trusted
- The majority of drug users are criminals
- A person using drugs is immoral
The relevance of this factor is primarily in the manifestations of a moral judgement by the respondent, of a drug user. The identification of drug use with formal delinquency and crime relates to the stereotypical image of the user as belonging to the marginal groups of criminals and deviants. The adherents to the attitudes expressed by the items in this factor would presumably see themselves on the other side of the legal barricade of the users, i.e. criminals and deviants.
Factor 2: Attitudes towards experimentation with drugs -
- Those who don’t use drugs, miss something in life
- There is no harm if someone takes marijuana occasionally
- There is no harm if someone takes L.S.D. occasionally
- There is no harm if someone takes heroin occasionally
- Everyone should use drugs, at least once, in order to know something about it.
This factor allows us to find out the attitudes of people when it comes to only experimenting with drugs.
Factor 3: Legalisation of drug use –
- Marijuana should be legalised
- L.S.D. should be legalised
- Heroin should be legalised
- All drugs should be legalised
This factor should indicate how strongly the respondent’s agree or disagree with the legalisation of separate drugs and as drugs as a whole.
Factor 4: Attitudes of others toward drug use –
- Most of your friends are in favour of drugs
- Your family would be disappointed if they knew you used drugs
- Your family would oppose your association with persons who have used drugs
These items in this factor show the effect of societal control through family and friends towards drug use.
If this attitude measurement scale were to be given out to respondents then I would expect a high correlation between the first factor and the third factor. Those who would score low on factor one should be against legislation or easing of punishment towards drug users. It should be believed that those who think that drug use is related to criminal behaviour have a negative attitude towards experimentation with drugs of any sort. On the other hand, those who would have a positive attitude towards factor one should generally have a positive attitude towards factor two.
Factor three would probably be strongly related to the attitude towards experimentation with drugs. Those whose attitudes on factor three are permissive would probably advocate legalisation of drugs and should be high on the first factor as well.
Using Thurstone’s attitude measurement scale I have designed my own attitude measurement scale, which I believe has been quite accurately done. I have avoided double-barrelled questions, avoided ambiguity within the statements, avoided long statements and put in statements that actually measure a person’s opinion. But this may still not be enough to make the perfect attitude measurement scale.
For Thurstone, the pioneer of attitude scaling, the sine qua non was the
uni-dimensionality of a scale. Without establishing this criterion there could be no comparisons between individuals, groups or countries. A single dimension may be an ecologically valid description of some social objects, for example a right to left scale is probably appropriate for a two party political system. People may represent other social objects in more complex terms, as such as, a single dimension would not capture the universe representations of the object.
Subsequent developments in varieties of multi-dimensional scaling have shown the heuristic value of the assumption of multi-dimensionality in the mapping of representations of social phenomena. There are many techniques available, factor analysis and variants of multi-dimensional scaling and correspondence analysis. These statistical procedures have been misused as often as they are employed to good purpose. But at least, in principle, these approaches allow for the constructivist presumption that the stimulus is not a given: different people and groups may differently represent a social object. In the early days this may have been recognised, but it was not a matter for further research.
All in all these considerations lead me to the conclusion that we are unlikely to profit from these attitudes scaling procedures. It is worth acknowledging similarities in the problematics of early attitude scaling and aspects of social representations theory. The requirement to sample the universe of a social object, the use in some studies of claims drawn from ordinary people and the mass media, the opportunity to compare and contrast groupings with different scale positions, the interest in changes in scale positions over time or following the recent media coverage of an issue. All these aspects of attitude scaling resonate with issues in social representations. But there are also differences.
Thurstone was at pains to develop a method to scale the affect for and against a psychological object. Like the measurement of a table, he argued, it is not possible to capture all the complexity of the attitude in a single number. While he recognised that it would be interesting to explain the cognitive basis underlying affective responses, the task of attitude measurement stopped short of this.
To this extent attitude-scaling methods can only be a small part of the social representational project. We need to go beyond opinion research and analyses concerning ‘how many’ or ‘how much’, and ask questions about the ‘whys’. What are the meanings and constructions of social objects for different grouping? Where do these opinions come from and how are they transformed and sustained in social life? It is highly unlikely that these issues will be captured in metric quantification, even of a multi-dimensional nature. Yet a combination of the qualitative and quantitative approaches may prove to be a productive creation.
Bibliography
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American Sociological Review, 9, 139-150
Thurstone, L.L. (1928) – Attitudes Can Be Measured.
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Thurstone, L.L. (1931) – The Measurement of Social Attitudes.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 26, 249-269.
Berg, D.F. (1970) – The Non-Medical Use of Dangerous Drugs in the United States: A Comprehensive View. The International Journal of The Addictions, Vol. 5(4)
Garfield, E.F., Boreing E & Smith J.P. (1971) – Marijuana Use On A Campus: Spring 1969, The International Journal of The Addictions, Vol. 6(3)
Oppenheim, A.W. (1966) – Questionnaire Design and Attitude Measurement.
Basic Books Inc., New York
