QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENTThe scale has a simple logic. We ask people to
respond to a series of ordered statements. We place
more socially intimate or close situations at one end
and the least socially threatening situations at the
opposite end. The scale’s logic assumes that a per-
son who is uncomfortable with another social group
and might accept a few nonthreatening (socially dis-
tant) situations will express discomfort or refusal
regarding the more threatening (socially intimate)
situations.
We can use the scale in several ways. For
example, we give people a series of statements:
People from Group X are entering your country, are
in your town, work at your place of employment,
live in your neighborhood, become your personal
friends, and marry your brother or sister. We ask
people whether they feel comfortable with the situ-
ation in the statement or the contact is acceptable.
We ask people to respond to all statements until they
are at a situation with which they do not feel com-
fortable. No set number of statements is required;
the number usually ranges from five to nine.
We can use the Bogardus scale to see how dis-
tant people feel from one outgroup versus another
(see Example Box 8, Example of Bogardus Social
Distance Scale). We can use the measure of social
distance as either an independent or a dependent
variable. For example, we might believe that social
distance from a group is highest for people who
have some other characteristic, such as education.
Our hypothesis might be that White people’s feel-
ings of social distance toward Vietnamese people is
negatively associated with education; that is, the
least educated Whites feel the most social distance.
In this situation, social distance is the dependent
variable, and amount of education is the indepen-
dent variable.
The social distance scale has two potential lim-
itations. First, we must tailor the categories to a spe-
cific outgroup and social setting. Second, it is not
easy for us to compare how a respondent feels
toward several different groups unless the respon-
dent completes a similar social distance scale for all
outgroups at the same time. Of course, how a re-
spondent completes the scale and the respondent’s
actual behavior in specific social situations may
differ.
4.Semantic differential.Developed in the
1950s as an indirect measure of a person’s feelings
about a concept, object, or other person,semantic
differentialmeasures subjective feelings by using
many adjectives because people usually communi-
cate evaluations through adjectives. Most adjectives
have polar opposites (e.g.,light/dark, hard/soft,
slow/fast). The semantic differential attempts to
capture evaluations by relying on the connotations
of adjectives. In this way, it measures a person’s
feelings and evaluations in an indirect manner.
To use the semantic differential, we offer re-
search participants a list of paired opposite adjec-
tives with a continuum of 7 to 11 points between
them. We ask participants to mark the spot on the
continuum between the adjectives that best ex-
presses their evaluation or feelings. The adjectives
can be very diverse and should be mixed (e.g., pos-
itive items should not be located mostly on either
the right or the left side). Adjectives in English tend
to fall into three major classes of meaning: evalua-
tion (good–bad),potency (strong–weak),and ac-
tivity (active–passive). Of the three classes,
evaluation is usually the most significant.
The most difficult part of the semantic differ-
ential is analyzing the results. We need to use ad-
vanced statistical procedures to do so. Results from
the procedures inform us as to how a person per-
ceives different concepts or how people view a con-
cept, object, or person. For example, political
analysts might discover that young voters perceive
their candidate to be traditional, weak, and slow, and
midway between good and bad. Elderly voters per-
ceive the candidate as leaning toward strong, fast,
and good, and midway between traditional and
modern. In Example Box 9, Example of Semantic
Differential, a person rated two concepts. The pat-
tern of responses for each concept illustrates howSemantic differential A scale that indirectly mea-
sures feelings or thoughts by presenting people a topic
or object and a list of polar opposite adjectives or ad-
verbs and then having them indicate feelings by mark-
ing one of several spaces between the two adjectives
or adverbs.