ATTITUDESATTITUDE AS INDICATORIncreasingly, attitudes are employed as indicators.
Some researchers use attitude measures as indica-
tors of concepts, while others study changes in
attitudes over time as indicators of social change.
Indicators of Concepts. Measures of specific
attitudes are frequently used as indicators of more
general concepts. For example, agreement with
the following statement is interpreted as an indica-
tor of powerlessness: ‘‘This world is run by the few
people in power, and there is not much the little
guy can do about it.’’ Powerlessness is considered
to be a general orientation toward the social world
and is a sense that one has little or no control over
events. Feelings of powerlessness may be related
to such varied behaviors as vandalism, not voting
in elections, and chronic unemployment.
Attitude measures have been used to assess
many other concepts used in the analysis of politi-
cal attitudes and behavior. These include the liber-
alism–conservatism dimension, political tolerance
(of radical or unpopular groups), trust in or disaf-
fection with national institutions, and relative dep-
rivation. (For a review of this literature, see Kinder
and Sears 1985.) Attitude measures are used to
assess many other characteristics of persons. In the
realm of work these include occupational values,
job satisfaction, and leadership style.
A major concern when attitudes are employed
as indicators is construct validity, that is, whether
the specific items used are valid measures of the
underlying concept. In the powerlessness exam-
ple, the connection between the content of the
item and the concept may seem obvious, but even
in cases like this it is important to demonstrate
validity. A variety of analytic techniques may be
used, including interitem correlations, factor analy-
sis, and LISREL.
Indicators of Social Change. Two methodo-
logical developments have made it possible to use
attitudes to study social change. The first was the
development of probability sampling techniques,
which allow the investigator to make inferences
about the characteristics of a population from the
results obtained by surveying a sample of that
population. The second is the use of the same
attitude measures in surveys of representative sam-
ples at two or more points in time.
A major source of such data is the General
Social Survey (GSS), an annual survey of a proba-
bility sample of adults. The GSS repeats a core set
of items on a roughly annual basis, making possi-
ble the study of changes over a period of thirty
years. Many of these items were drawn directly
from earlier surveys, making comparisons over a
forty- or fifty-year timespan possible. A published
book describes these items and presents the re-
sponses obtained each time the item was used
(Niemi, Mueller, and Smith 1989). Other sources
of such data include the National Election Studies
and the Gallup Polls.This use of attitude items reflects a general
concern with social change at the societal level.
The investigator uses aggregate measures of atti-
tudes in the population as an index of changes in
cultural values and social institutions. Two areas of
particular interest are attitudes toward race and
gender roles. In both areas, efforts have been
made to improve access to educational programs,
jobs, and professions, increase wages and salaries,
and provide greater opportunity for advancement.
The availability of responses to the same attitude
items over time allows us to assess the consistency
between these social changes and attitudes in the
population. Consider the question ‘‘Do you think
civil rights leaders are trying to push too fast, are
going too slowly, or are moving at about the right
speed?’’ This question was asked in surveys of
national samples every two years from 1964 to
1976 and in 1980. The percentage of whites reply-
ing ‘‘too fast’’ declined from 74 percent in 1964 to
40 percent in 1980 (Bobo 1988), suggesting in-
creased white support for the black movement. In
general, research indicates that both racial and
gender-role attitudes became more liberal between
1960 and 1990, and this finding is consistent with
the social changes in these areas. Other topics that
have been studied include attitudes toward abor-
tion, social class identification, and subjective quali-
ty of life.There are several issues involved in this use
of attitude items. The first is the problem of
‘‘nonattitudes.’’ Respondents may answer survey
questions or endorse statements even though they
have no attitude toward the object. In fact, when
respondents are questioned about fictional ob-
jects or organizations, some of them will express
an opinion. Schuman and Kalton (1985) discuss