Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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Attitudes: Methodology Ontology Impact 2 |
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| Convenor | Dr Mark Elliot (University of Manchester) |
What are attitudes? How do we know about them? How should we measure them? How are they related (methodologically and ontologically) to other concepts such values, beliefs and concerns. How are attitudes used in research to explain and describe other phenomena? How is an understanding of attitudes useful for policy makers? These are some of the questions that we hope to cover in this session.
The attitude as an explanatory and descriptive concept has been with us for nearly a century and yet we still know relatively little about what attitudes really are. Originally a subject of psychological investigation they have taken on a research life of their own within quantitative social science. The use of the concept has now spread throughout the Humanities.
Papers will be considered on any topic within the broad heading of "attitude research" including but not limited to:
New approaches to capturing attitudinal data.
Attitude Measurement.
Case based vs. variable based approaches to understanding attitudes.
Attitudes and behaviour change.
Implicit vs. Explicit attitudes.
Substantive research with attitudinal variables as explantories.
Substantive research with attitudinal variables as responses.
APC studies of historical attitude change.
Theoretical work on attitude structure or the relationship between attitudes and other constructs.
Whilst ageism is now one of the most pervasive forms of prejudice across Europe its exact nature and origins remain under researched. In particular, there is a gap in our understanding of attitudes towards younger age groups, as, faced with the reality of an ageing population and the challenges this poses, there has been a tendency among both researchers and policy makers to view ageism predominantly in terms of old age (Nelson, 2002; Abrams et al, 2011). However, ageism can be and is experienced by all age groups. In fact, not only do younger age groups report more experiences of age-based prejudice than older age groups (Sweiry and Willits, 2011), overall feelings towards people in their 20s are less positive than feelings towards those in their 70s (Fitzgerald et al, 2010).
This paper uses data from the European Social Survey's round 4 module 'Experiences and Expressions of Ageism' to further explore the nature and drivers of attitudes towards young people. After illustrating the nature of societal attitudes held towards those in their 20s, and how these vary across European countries, the paper will go on to examine the factors associated with holding positive attitudes. In particular, the paper draws on theories of intergroup contact (Allport, 1954) most commonly applied to attitudes on race and/or immigration (e.g. Pettigrew, 1998) and tests the extent to which increased intergenerational contact across different social contexts reduces age-based prejudice.
Q-methodology is promoted as able to measure patterns of attitudes within a population. Q-methodology consists in a number of steps. First the researcher must identify a population of possible views on a given topic and select from that population a representative subset of stimuli that are appropriate for sorting. The researcher samples a small group of respondents whose diversity is theoretically justified as sufficient to produce the full range of possible combinations of views. Then the researcher has respondents sort the representative subset of statements typically into quasi-normal distribution and asks respondents to narrate the rationale for some of placements they have made. The results form a typical survey-results matrix that is transposed and factor analyzed by respondent. Interpretation of the factors chosen is then supported by the justifications respondents gave for the decisions made with respect to placement of sort items in the quasi-normal distribution. The claimed results of this process are descriptions of typical patterns of attitudes found in a population with respect to a given object as they obtain outside of the research setting. The nature of the conclusions offered by, the ease of execution of and the robustness with respect to threats of Q methodology distinguish this method from other attitudinal measures. This paper raises theoretical, empirical and statistical concerns with respect to each of the steps outlined above whose combination appear to cast some doubt on the plausibility of the claims made by proponents of method.
Gender role attitudes feed into a broad spectrum of European sociological debate concerning women's position in the labour market; declining fertility rates; family breakdown and naturally feeds into the discourse surrounding welfare state and policy decision making. This paper aims to highlight one method for deriving a measure of attitude change over time using principal components analysis of gender role attitude data from the European Values Study.
The data is taken from three waves of the EVS from 1990; 1999 and 2008 incorporating 24 European countries and the same six variables which are subject to the data reduction technique PCA utilising a direct oblimin rotation and comprise of statements that require a level of agreement response (from a likert scale). A theory is proposed utilising elements from the 'Individualisation thesis' and hypothesises that there are three elements of individualisation captured within the attitude data; the multiple role burden of women; a change in the biographical life story of women and the economic independence of women. The results offer an incredibly consistent component structure for each wave of data, with the same very high loaded pairs of variables (with an extraction of at least 0.7) extracted onto the same three components. The extracted components can be clearly seen to map onto the three proposed elements of individualisation covering attitudes to a 'motherhood conflict role', 'a domesticity role' and 'an economic role'. These theoretical pairings encourage an understanding of the attitude formation and the highly coherent component structure provides a
What exactly is tolerance? When people demonstrate acceptance of a particular group or behaviour does this reflect a principled commitment to tolerating difference or is it merely an expression of their attitudes towards a specific situation. One commonly applied test of whether people are exhibiting principled or generalised tolerance is to consider how far they are consistent in their attitudes towards a variety of different social political groups, including those with whom they disagree or dislike (Sniderman et al, 1991).
The paper uses the European Social Survey to explore attitudes towards immigrants, single parents, homosexuality, the role of women and political extremism. To the extent that attitudes are driven by an underlying commitment to tolerance any patterns of difference across countries and on the basis of age, gender, education and political orientation should hold consistently across attitudes. As an additional test, and to offset the possibility that support for these different groups merely reflects growing social liberalism, the paper also uses the Schwartz Human Values scale (Schwartz, 2004) to investigate how far people's attitudes towards these different groups are consistently associated with their underlying value orientations. In so far as attitudes reflect a principled commitment to tolerance we should observe a consistent relationship between attitudes towards each of these groups and scoring highly on the value of universalism i.e. understanding, appreciation and concern for all people.