Item Order and Guttman Scales

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 1964 papers

Abstract

One deduction from balance theory is that respondents will tend to integrate their answers to a set of attitude items. A second deduction, from classical figure-ground relations, is that the first item of a set of attitude items will, under certain conditions, influence responses to subsequent items. Two experimental studies dealing with these deductions for Guttman scales are reported. The results show that individual responses to certain Guttman scales may be systematically manipulated by item rearrangement. The implications of these findings for interpreting scale patterns and the role of contextual factors in attitude measurement are discussed.

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