Attitude scales are designed to quantitatively measure attitudes towards issues, institutions, or groups of people. They present statements along a continuum from strongly favorable to strongly unfavorable. Respondents indicate their level of agreement using a rating scale. Common methods include Thurstone's technique of having judges sort statements, Likert's method of summated ratings which scores responses, and Guttman's approach which orders statements by level of agreement. The scales aim to indirectly assess attitudes on controversial topics through standardized questionnaires.

3. ATTITUDE SCALE
 To assess the attitude or belief of an individual
 Designed to measure attitudes of a subject or group of subject
towards issues, institution, and groups of people.
 “An attitude may be defined as a learned emotional response set
for or against something” Barr, David, Johnson
Meanings of attitude
 Thurstone defines an attitude as the degree of positive or
negative affect associated with some psychological objects.
 Concept attitude denotes the “sum total of a man’s inclinations
and feelings, prejudices or bias, ideas, tears about any specific
topic.”
 Attitude continuum extending from favourableness through
neutral to unfavourableness.

4. 
According to frerman (1965) there are three assumption
upon attitude scale;
 The scale should deal with a controversial question
 An individual’s feelings and insights is regard to the
question will determine his responses to various
statements
 The statements can be scaled regarding the degree to
which the favour are opposed to question under
consideration
Assumptions

5. CHARACTERISTICS
 It provides for quantitative measure on a uni-dimensional
scale of continuum.
 It uses statements from the extreme positive position to
extreme negative position.
 It generally uses a five point scale as:
Strongly agree(SA), Agree(A), Undecided(U),Disagree(D) and
Strongly disagree(SD). The individual gets the score as the
sum of item credits.
 It is usually standardized and norms are worked out
 It disguises the attitude object rather than directly asking
about the attitude on the subject

6. PURPOSE
 In educational research , these scales are used
especially for finding the attitudes of persons on
issues like co-education, religions education,
democracy in schools etc depending upon the
need of the situation.
Some Attitude Scales
Methods of measuring attitudes indirectly, used for
research purposes are;
 Thurstone Technique
 Likert’s Method of summated Rating
 Guttman’s scale

7. THURSTONE’S TECHNIQUE
 Attitude is accepted as an uni-dimensional linear continuum.
 A large number of statements of various shades of favourable and
unfavourable opinions.
 large number of judges exercising complete detachment sort out into
eleven piles ranging from the most statements to the most favourable
ones.
 First category each judge places the statements considers most
favourable to the object.
 Second ,those considered next most favourable.
 Eleventh category considers most unfavourable .
 Tabulations are made which indicate the number of judges who
placed each item in each category.
 Calculating cumulated proportions for each item and ogives are
constructed.
 Median of the frequency distribution in which the scores range from
0 to 11

8. Thurstone’s technique is also known as the technique of
‘equal appearing intervals’
statements Scale
value
 I think this company treats its employees better than
any other company does.
 If I had to do it over again I’d still work for this
company.
 The workers put as much over on the company puts
over on them.
 You have got to have pull with certain people around
here to get ahead.
 An honest man fails in this company
10.4
9.5
5.1
2.1
0.8
CONTINUES………….

9. LIKERT’S SCALE
 Subject’s response to each item may be considered as
his or her rating of attitude on a 5- point scale.
 Strongly agree(SA), Agree(A),
Undecided(U),Disagree(D) and Strongly disagree(SD).
The individual gets the score as the sum of item credits.
 Collection of a number of statements about the subject.
 Items that to be either definitely favourable or definitely
unfavourable to the attitude
 All favourable statements are scored from the maximum
to minimum.
 From a score of 5 to 1or 5 for strongly agree and so on 1
for strongly disagree.
 Total of these scores on all items measures a
respondents favorableness.

10. CONTINUES…..
 Eg : scale consists of 30 items , the following score
values
30*5=150 ( most favourable response)
30*3=90 (neutral attitude)
30*1=30 (most unfavourable attitude)
It is thus known as a method of summated ratings.
Subject’s response to each item may be considered as his
or her rating of attitude on a 5- point scale and the total
score is obtained after all these weights are summated ,
the method is known as SUMMATED RATINGS .

11. GUTTMAN SCALE
 Guttman applied this model in 1941 that each statement
has an idea relationship of one type or another with the
exacting measurement of the attitude.
 Study in investigating a youngsters attitude to career.
 The item in the questionnaire which following.
1. Military career is an attractive and yes no
progressive career.
2. Multinational companies pay a
heavy salary yes no
Any set of items that produces a pattern of
responses is called Guttman Scale.

12. LIMITATIONS OF ATTITUDE SCALE
 An individual may conceal his real attitude and
express socially acceptable opinions only.
 An individual may not really know how he feels
about a social issue.
 An individual may not be able to express his attitude
towards a situation in abstract.
 It is unlikely that the statements are of equal value in
forness or againstness