Analysis of the Human Attitude

go overing the kind-hearted mental bearing Melissa Hightower November 19, 2012 PSY475 University of Phoenix Surveying the Human Attitude Attitude can be seen in m either parts of a chance(a) routine of an individual. The significance of measuring attitude has become of the essence(p) in many beas of our society. Employers want to measure attitude of employees, while customers on the a nonher(prenominal) side of the counter view att Attitude Survey The measure of attitudes is of enormous importance in a consumer driven economy, such as the single that exists in the United States today.Psychologists use attitude wads to translate subjective attitudes of population into empirical data. Attitudes themselves are distinguishable from interests and personality traits, in that attitudes are unremarkably attached to an object (Hogan, 2007). The construct of attitude proceedingu every(prenominal)y encompasses the cognitive, affective, and behavioral thoughts, feelings, and act ions that a person exhibits in reaction toor as a publication ofan object. For the purposes of this theme I designed an attitude survey using a selected-response format that is built upon the precepts of the SERVQUAL approach to attitude respectment.The purpose of the survey is to assess the attitudes and perceptions that University of Phoenix (UOP) students exhibit at graduation about UOP itself. The intention of this paper is to discuss the design, administration, scoring, and interpretation of the survey as well as any issues I experienced while creating the survey. Design The target audience for this survey is UOP graduates that attended at least their sopho more(prenominal) and senior college years at UOP. The particular trait to be measured is the attitude that graduating students hold towards UOP subsequently graduations.The survey should be administered electronically via the UOP student login page after graduation. in that location are 11 items in the survey and should take no more than 1-2 minutes to complete. I did this on purpose, because I know from experience that I hate taking long surveys when all I really cute to do was log into UOP online. The survey uses the Likert scale to measure attitude, with the possible answers of potently disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree with the corresponding scads of -2, -1, 0, +1, and +2, respectively. The score report is utilise to compile the individual scores into a descriptive format.The item stems are the assertions themselves and the responses are gauged through the Likert scale, otherwise known as the method of summated ratings (Hogan, 2007). The basal proposition of the Likert scale is that one attitudinal construct is at the basis of all of the items. All of the statements that I proposed are about the attitude of the graduate toward UOP and consequently addresses this concern. Administration, Scoring, and Interpretation The survey should be administered by UOP personnel and n ot the teachers. It would not do for the results of the survey to be skewed by the last socio-economic class experience.This factor cannot be done away with holyly, but it can be minimized by having the survey administered by UOP personnel rather than a teacher. Moreover, in a general sense the lower the score the less(prenominal) the atonement and the higher the score the lower the satisfaction. The directionality of the scores are all in the same direction, meaning that a rating of strongly disagree always corresponds to a more unfavorable attitude toward UOP. However, it is important that the survey items be tried out on a elephantine variety of students at UOP and the scores tabulated in advance.These scores go forth act as a means to convert the raw scores that will be collected when the test is tangiblely distributed on a giant scale to normed scores, which are more useful for interpretation. For instance, if there is universal determination to score one item extremely negative, then the raw scores of the actual test can be mediated to take into flyer this propensity. For the purposes of a general attitude survey negative scores hypothesise negative perceptions and thoughts about UOP and positive scores the opposite.Issues Experienced While Creating Survey The SERVQUAL approach to attitude surveys is specifically designed for quantifying service quality and mathematical product satisfaction in the retail industry (Gob, 2007). As the SERVQUAL approach applies to this attitude survey, the main point of any survey is to ascertain the examinees expectations, perceptions and the gap amid them. Therefore, I tried to design items to measure both the expectations of the UOP student as well as their perception of the item in question.This will adjoin the validity of the interpretation that lower scores equal less satisfaction and vice versa, since the items not only deal with the students actual perception, but their expectations as well. I also trie d to encompass the entire spectrum of measurementscognitive, affective, and behavioralwhen considering the items to be administered. I am not comfortable with open self-reported tests. They seem too subjective and too circumstantial. The items should gauge observable behavior, past(a) feelings, and current thoughts about the construct being measured. ConclusionIn sum, the attitude survey that I created follows the Likert scale method to gauge the overall satisfaction of UOP students, with an emphasis on both the perception and expectation of the items. The survey also attempts to measure the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of the construct being tested. The purpose of the survey was to ascertain the general attitude that UOP students have toward the University of Phoenix at graduation. References Gob, R. (2007). Ordinal methodology in the digest of Likert scales. Quality & Quantity, 41(5),601-626. Retrieved July 24, 2010, from SocINDEX with Full Text database.