ATTITUDE

What is Attitude?
Attitude is a mental position relative to a way of thinking or being; a leaning toward that which you believe. A positive attitude is, therefore, the inclination to generally be in an optimistic, hopeful state of mind. An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event-- this is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question. Attitudes are judgments. They develop on the ABC model (affect, behavior, and cognition). The affective response is an emotional response that expresses an individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object. Most attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.

Implicit and explicit attitudes

There is also considerable research on implicit attitudes, which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, but have effects that are measurable through sophisticated methods using people's response times to stimuli. Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly understood.

Jung's definition
Jung's definition of attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way". Attitudes very often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad definition Jung defines several attitudes. The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the following.

Consciousness and the unconscious. The "presence of two attitudes is extremely frequent, one conscious and the other unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly evident in neurosis".

Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to Jung's theory of types that he labeled them the "attitude-types".

Rational and irrational attitudes. "I conceive reason as an attitude". The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological functions, each with its attitude.

The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with its attitude. "There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude".

Individual and social attitudes. Many of the latter are "isms". In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude. When I take an abstract attitude.... Abstraction is contrasted with concretism. CONCRETISM. By this I mean a peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction. For example "I hate his attitude for being Sarcastic.

Emotion and Attitude Change

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health

campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and conative components. Attitudes are part of the brains associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes. In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension (Dillard, 1994). Other methods include concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues.

Attitude as a Hypothetical Construct

The term hypothetical construct is used to describe a variable that is not directly observable, but is measurable by an indirect means such as verbal expression or overt behavior - attitudes are considered to be such variables. Components of attitudes Attitudes are composed of affective, cognitive and behavioral components. The term 'affective' refers to feelings or emotions toward an object, or how you feel about a subject. 'Cognitive' refers to our knowledge or beliefs about something, or what you know about something. And the 'behavioral' component involves the actual actions made toward an object; what you do. We can find out more about attitudes people hold towards something by analyzing one or more of the components of attitudes. Like wise, one can alter their attitude towards something through a change in one of the components of knowledge, feelings or behavior. For example, the role of advertising will aid the consumers to have a new thought or idea about a product, which in consequence, if successful.

Propositional Attitude
A propositional attitude is a relational mental state connecting a person to a proposition. They are often assumed to be the simplest components of thought and can express meanings or content that can be true or false. In being a type of attitude they imply that a person can have different mental postures towards a proposition, for example, believing, desiring, or hoping, and thus they imply intentionality. Linguistically, they are denoted by an embedded "that" clause, for example, 'Sally believed that she had won'. Propositional attitudes have directions of fit: some are meant to reflect the world, others to influence it.

Coercive Persuasion
Coercive persuasion and thought reform are alternate names for programs of social influence capable of producing substantial behavior and attitude change through the use of coercive tactics, persuasion, and/or interpersonal and group-based influence manipulations (Schein 1961; Lifton 1961). Such programs have also been labeled "brainwashing" (Hunter 1951), a term more often used in the media than in scientific literature. However identified, these programs are distinguishable from other elaborate attempts to influence behavior and attitudes, to socialize, and to accomplish social control. Their distinguishing features are their totalistic qualities (Lifton 1961), the types of influence procedures they employ, and the organization of these procedures into three distinctive subphases of the overall process (Schein 1961; Ofshe and Singer 1986).

Cognitive Consistency Theories of Attitude Change

Balance Theory
This theory was first developed by Fritz Heider. Basically it is an interpersonal theory of consistency. Unit formation and denial of unit formation (+1, -1) Liking and disliking (+1, -1) Balance exist when you like a person you are associated with (+1 x +1), or dislike a person you are not associated with (-1 x -1). Imbalance exists when you dislike a person you are associated with (+1 x -1) or like a person with whom you are not associated with (-1 x +1) Imbalance is stressful and you will tend to change one of the cognitive components.

Congruity Theory
This theory was developed by Osgood and Tannenbaum. It deals with attitudes (evaluations) and relationships Attitudes are measured on a 7 point scale from +3 to -3. Attitudes are always toward some object. Objects may become linked in our mind, that is form a bond. There are two types of bonds: Associative (positive link between objects) Dissociative (negative link between objects) These links are similar to unit formation in the Balance model of Heider. Congruity exists when our evaluation of (attitude toward) two objects that are associatively bonded are identical in magnitude and direction. We like the Democratic Party (+2), and we like National Health Insurance (+2) and we learn that the Democratic Party endorses National Health Insurance (Associative Bond).

Congruity also exists when our evaluation of (attitude toward) two objects that are dissociatively bonded are identical in magnitude and opposite in direction. We like the Democratic Party (+2), and we dislike Multinational Companies (-2) and we learn that the Democratic Party rejects Multinational Companies (Dissociative Bond). Incongruity exists when our evaluation of (attitude toward) two objects that are associatively bonded are not identical in magnitude. We like the Democratic Party (+2), and we like Election Reform (+1) and we learn that the Democratic Party endorses Election Reform (Associative Bond). Incongruity also exists when our evaluation of (attitude toward) two objects that are dissociatively bonded are not identical in magnitude. We like the Democratic Party (+2), and we dislike Continuation of Tax Advantages (-1) and we learn that the Democratic Party rejects Continuation of Tax Advantages (Dissociative Bond). When there is incongruity people feel the effects and are motivated to change their attitudes to make them congruent. Both attitudes change. The weaker attitude changes more, the stronger attitude changes less. Attitudes do not change direction (sign). Let stronger attitude magnitude = S, weaker attitude magnitude = W (no signs, absolute values). Then S (before change) becomes (after change) S-((W/(S+W))*(S-W)), and W (before change) becomes (after change) W+((S/(S+W))*(S-W)). Signs of the new values are the same as the signs of the old values. When there is a dissociative bond between two attitudes with the same sign, or an associative bond between two attitudes with opposite sign, the theory does not apply. We tend to not believe the bond in this case. Work examples

Dissonance Theory
This theory was proposed by Leon Festinger, and has generated more research and controversy than any other cognitive consistency theory because of its ability to make non-obvious predictions. Two cognitive elements can stand in relationship to each other as consonant (one implies

the other), dissonant (one implies the opposite of the other) or irrelevance (one has no implication for the other) Dissonance is distressful and we seek to reduce it.

The Theory of Attitude Formation

Why do people think the way they do? How do they change their minds? These and similar questions have long been asked by epistemologists and more recently by social psychologists. The latter, since the Second World War, have accumulated data from experiments and surveys which are, to a greater degree than heretofore, measurable; and the implications of this research on attitude change extend to social group work. The social group worker asks the question, why do group members think as they do? And where unacceptable behavior springs from the delinquent's attitude towards society, the group worker may ask, how can the delinquent be induced to change his mind? The fundamental questionWhy do people hold particular attitudes? may be answered in a number of ways. The answer proposed in this article is an exposition of the theory of Daniel Katz which involves a functional approach to attitudes.1 the second part of the article concerns the allied but distinct topic of the processes of opinion change. Here the thinking of H.C. Kelman on compliance, identification and internalization is explored.'2 While Kelman and Katz are both social psychologists and their conclusions cannot be incorporated into the theory and practice of social group work without further investigation and experiment, nonetheless what they say is clearly relevant to group work, even if there remain many unanswered questions. For this reason, I shall refer to those aspects of their theories which have special relevance to groups and work with groups, though I shall not attempt to spell out in detail all the implications for social group work.

The functional approach to attitudes

Sociologists and anthropologists have employed functional analysis to explain societal structures.7 Katz uses much the same methodology to analyze attitudes. The method is not the only possible one, nor does it exhaust the meaning of attitudes; but it is a useful method. Katz cites two streams of thought regarding man's attitudes: one which minimizes man's rational powers and the other which invokes a rational model of man. Katz, who clearly belongs to the second school of thought, asserts that at the psychological level the reasons for holding onto or for changing attitudes are found in the functions they perform for the individual.8 the functions are those of adjustment, egodefense, value expression and knowledge. It seems to me that there might easily arise some confusion here, especially in the category of the knowledge function of attitudes, between .functional analysis and causal analysis. It is true that the individual holds an attitude because it explains phenomena, and therefore in a very real way Katz's assertion is true that an individual holds an attitude in order to give meaning to what would otherwise be meaningless and chaotic. But, leaving aside for the moment the other functions of attitudes, what causes the attitude is both the evidence confronting the individual and his own power of reasoning.

The adjustive function

This category embraces those attitudes which are utilitarian in origin and intent. Very often the object is some tangible benefit. Often, too, these attitudes are affective associations based upon previous experience. A favorable attitude towards a certain food is based on pleasant memories of the food. This function of attitudes has relevance in the realm of behavioral theory and social group work. Take, for instance, the matter of 'shaping' behavior. It follows from the nature of the adjustive function of attitudes that the clarity, consistency and nearness of rewards and punishments as they relate to the individual's attitudes and goals are important factors

in the acquiring of new utilitarian attitudes. This must be taken into account in shaping new habits. A further implication for social group work is that if the group worker is in a situation where utilitarian, adjustive attitudes predominate among individuals, the group goals must be such that they will help in the satisfaction of utilitarian needs or in the avoidance of punishments. But punishment can be dysfunctional in promoting attitude change where there is no apparent course of action available to the individual to save him from undesirable consequences. Fear appeals must be linked to delineated courses of action if attitude change is desired. Furthermore, as the research of Janis and Terwilliger indicates, when a relatively high level of fear is induced by warnings presented in a persuasive communication, the recipients will become motivated to develop psychological resistances to the communication's arguments, conclusions and recommendations.

The ego-defensive function

This is where attitudes proceed from within the person, and the objects and situation to which they are attached are merely convenient outlets for their expression. Katz gives the example of an individual who projects hostility to a minority in order to protect himself from feelings of inferiority. One common type of ego-defensive function is transference where an attitude adopted towards a person is not based on the reality of the situation. These ego-defensive attitudes stem basically from internal conflicts. One of the difficulties of ego-defensive attitudes is that the usual procedures for changing attitudes and behavior may not cause the individual to modify but may force him to reinforce his defenses, causing him to cling tenaciously to his emotionally held belief. Among the procedures for attempting to change attitudes, Katz includes invoking punishments. This has relevance in the application of behavioral theory to social group work. However, it should be noted that those who advocate the application of behavioral theory most frequently favor a system of rewards rather than punishments.

The value-expressive function

These attitudes have the function of giving positive expression to central values and to the type of person an individual conceives himself to be. A man, for instance, may think of himself as an internationalist. Attitudes in keeping with thisfavorable attitudes, say, towards other countrieswould have a value-expressive function for him. These attitudes may have a double function: they may be a confirmation of self-identity; and they may also help to mold the self-image "closer to the heart's desire." Favorable attitudes towards a group very often have a value-expressive function. The group gives the individual a sense of identity. Arthur Cohen in writing of the group as an important source of attitude change states, "Many research findings which show that members of a group resist communications that run counter to the norms and values of the group and accept those sanctioned by it can be interpreted in terms of social approval or disapproval."10 He cites studies which would indicate that those who place a high value on their membership in the group are most vulnerable to threats of social punishment, for they have the strongest desire to maintain friendly relationships with the other members and to secure the prestige and privileges associated with their status as group members.1 * Also of significance for social group workers is Cohen's finding that persons of low self-esteem tend to be more susceptible to influence from persons of higher self-esteem. A favorable attitude to the group may be value-expressive insofar as it gives a person of low self-esteem.

Attitude Measurment
From our discussion of the nature of attitudes in an earlier chapter, we know that attitude is an hypothetical entity constructed to represent certain underlying response tendencies. As hypothetical constructs, attitudes cannot be measured directly. Any attempt to assess them can only be inferential in nature: that is, we can only study behavior which is reasonably assumed to indicate the attitudes to be measured and quantify these indications so as to get an idea of how much individuals or groups differ in their

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psychological orientations toward a particular object or issue. The behavior to be studied for the purpose may be one that occurs in a natural setting or a simulated situation; it may be speech or performance behavior. For example, a person talking about, say, prohibition when he is seated at a tea stall over his usual cup of tea exhibits speech behavior in a natural setting. If you were to formally interview him on his views about prohibition, you would again have his speech behavior, but in an artificial environment. Observation of his visits to bars or drink sessions at home would provide data on his natural performance behavior. If, on the other hand, he served as a subject in an experiment designed to study his behavior, we would obtain performance data from a simulated setting. An attitude may comprise characteristics of strength, magnitude or intensity, importance, salience or centrality, complexity, flexibility, etc. Commonly, however, attitude measurements are concerned with the magnitude dimension and its direction; that is, the degree of favorableness or unfavourableness of a person with regard to a psychological object. A psychological object, as we have already seen in the chapter on nature of attitudes, may be a person, a group, an idea, a symbol, or anything with regard to which people could harbor positive or negative feelings. Attitudes are expressions of our covert feelings about or toward an object, person, issue, event, or behavior. An attitude is a point of view about a situation. It is generally agreed that attitude can be defined as a learned disposition or tendency to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object. One similar definition given by Baron and Byrne for attitudes is: relatively lasting clusters of feelings, beliefs, and behavior tendencies directed towards specific persons, ideas, objects or groups. In respect to marketing and business concerns, consumers may adjust learned attitudes over time by being exposed to the object directly (experience) or through receiving information about the object (e.g., advertising). Attitude measurement is useful to uncover perceptions and opinions people may have about specific objects or products.

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Why measure attitudes?

People have likes and dislikes and have them in varying degrees. But why study and measure them? Attitudes are action tendencies and as such they can facilitate or hinder action at all levels--individual, group, community, state, and national. Consider the case of population control. Among the various possible activities toward progress, the government of India wanted its people to adopt birth control and compulsory sterilization was introduced in certain parts of the country. But, this move, as we all know, gave rise to immense anxiety and antagonism among people and the programme ended in a fiasco. Such blatant disregard for people's attitudes not only thwarted many a corresponding programme of the government, but, tagged on to other grievances of the kind under Emergency, also turned into a massive time bomb which, after an adequate gestation period, blew up the once invincible reign of Mrs. Gandhi and her colleagues. At the same time, certain other activities like the introduction of new variety seeds in agriculture and the introduction of adult education had a better fate. To determine, therefore, what action to introduce when and how to introduce it for the desired effect among a target population, the action planners must know how far the existing action tendencies of the population are receptive/resistent to the proposed action. Such knowledge would help devise appropriate means for triggering the desired change. It is not being suggested here that attitudes have to be changed first in order that intended behavior may follow; nor is the reverse being implied that behavior must be changed so that corresponding attitudes will emerge. In fact, attitude may influence behavior and in turn be influenced by it. Whatever the theoretical position on this what-comes-first issue, it is a fact that attempts to introduce a change, more often than not, face some degree of resistence. Such resistance is dependant on how favorably or unfavorably the population in question is inclined toward the proposed course of action and related issues. It is here that knowledge of the target population's attitudes can guide any effort for planning and implementing developmental change. Action plans which ignore the attitudes of people can at best look forward to chance success.

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It is indeed likely that action change, once introduced and adopted, gives rise to a host of new attitudes towards the action and other connected issues in life. People's attitude toward themselves, having been exposed to a new course of action, may undergo change. They may also develop positive or negative attitudes toward the change agents. Such emergent attitudes, if of the unfavorable kind, will come in the way of future efforts. Assessment of the psychological impacts of interventions is, therefore, of interest not just to psychologists. All those engaged in any kind of persuasive, promotional, or developmental activities would need similar measures both in order to judge the expediency of introducing a particular action and to know the effects of having introduced it. Further, measurement of attitudes is a necessity for experimental and other studies concerned with attitude change.

Approaches to Attitude Measurement

How do we measure attitudes? We have said that we arrive at measures of attitudes by inference. But we need data on which to base our inference. Such data are collected by various methods. We may observe the ongoing behavior of people in the natural setting; we may directly ask the respondents to state their feelings with regard to the issue under study; we may assign a well-defined task to respondents and record their performance; we could generate data by giving the respondents partially structured stimuli to interpret or react to. Physiological reactions of respondents when exposed to the attitudinal object can also provide us with relevant data. For example, Westie and DeFleur (1959) studied the attitudes of subjects by taking the latter's galvanic skin responses, heartbeat, etc, when presented with pictures of Negroes and Whites in various social situations. Hess and Polt (1960) found that pleasant stimuli gave rise to pupillary dilation, whereas unpleasant ones led to pupillary constriction on the part of subjects. There is yet another set of methods of data collection, known as unobtrusive or non-reactive methods, in which respondents' cooperation or involvement is dispensed with. Let's elaborate on these methods:

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Direct observation
This method involves recording the actual behavior of people whose attitude is to be studied. It is indeed an objective method and well suited for certain kinds of issues. For example, it is quite commendable to observe the actual overt behavior of strikers by participating in the strike itself to gain a measure of the strikers' attitude. We could also observe a company executive in his day-to-day dealings with his subordinates to assess his attitudes towards them. Not all issues, however, lend themselves to direct observation. Can you, for instance, use this method of data collection to study the attitude of voters? Even the most dedicated and non-partisan psychologist would not have access to the polling booths to observe the actual voting behavior of people. Again, if you wanted to study and measure attitudes towards sex, could you possibly observe the overt sexual behavior of people? Some situations may, no doubt, permit simulation of a natural setting and role-play can be enacted to be able to observe behavior and infer the underlying attitude(s). Even where accessibility is not a problem, direct observation of behavior is not practicable if we want to have data on a large number of individuals. In addition to the difficulty of observing every individual in a large sample, there is no telling as to when an individual will exhibit the behavior which is relevant to the study in question. Thus, over and above the intense effort and cost involved, indefinite patience may also be called upon. Further, even when we have managed to spot some behavior related to our study, we do not know if the behavior was an outcome of the related attitude or one caused by other factors. Take for instance a boy who goes to church regularly. You have observed his behavior, all right. But, does this behavior mean that he is favorably inclined toward prayer and religion? Not necessarily. On asking him directly, you may discover that his girl friend cherishes religious sentiments and attends prayer services regularly. He goes there only to meet her! Observation of behavior, even when the behavior is the outcome of the attitude being studied, may tell us the direction of the underlying attitude (i.e., whether it is positive or negative), but it cannot as easily indicate the magnitude or strength of the attitude. It is

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also difficult to establish the reliability of behavioral measures of attitudes. The observers' perception as well as their ability to report what they have observed vary considerably. All these weaknesses, however, do not suggest that observation of overt behavior is futile for assessing attitudes. They only caution us that care needs to be taken in deciding upon the suitability of this method to a given situation.

Direct questioning
If we want to know how people feel about a certain thing, it seems most natural to ask them straight away as to what their feelings are. Direct questioning has, therefore, had an appeal as a method of studying attitudes. But, however logical and smooth this technique may seem to be, it serves only a limited purpose of roughly classifying respondents as favorable, unfavorable, and indifferent with regard to a psychological object. Here we have the same problem as the one often encountered in direct observation; normally, neither direct observation nor direct questioning assesses the degree of attitudes an individual possesses. In the absence of such an index, we cannot discriminate among individuals within the favorable and the unfavorable groups; nor can we know the distance between the two groups. There may, of course, be times when we require only to know as to how many are "for" and how many "against" a particular issue. Direct questioning may adequately serve the purpose here. We must bear in mind that inhibiting and/or social desirability factors can contaminate responses to direct questioning. For example, if you were to study people's attitudes toward the National Emergency when the Emergency was on, many a respondent would be reluctant to give you an answer or would, in all likelihood, loudly proclaim a favorable attitude. When controversial issues are involved and pressures and threats are operative, direct questioning is not the suitable means of data collection for assessing attitudes. Even when no threats are present, not all individuals are capable of articulating their feelings. A person may possess certain attitudes and behave accordingly, but may not be aware of them. Psycho-analysts have borne abundant witness to such phenomena. Thus, direct questioning or any other self-report technique will be of little avail if the

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respondent has no access to his own attitudinal orientations, buried in the realms of the unconscious. We shall return to the drawbacks of self-report methods a little later.

Some other approaches

Projective techniques and objective tasks, where the attitude objects are disguised, are successful ways of overcoming many of the difficulties encountered in direct observation. But these methods are not very popularly used in measuring attitudes -- probably because of low reliability in interpreting such data. Measures of galvanic skin responses (GSR), pupil dilations, vascular constrictions, heart-beat, etc. can also indicate attitudes. But such physiological arousals may not always discriminate attitudes. For instance, both positive and negative tendencies may give rise to similar readings in the galvanic skin response apparatus. Physiological measures have, no doubt, been carefully and gainfully used on certain occasions and interested readers may refer to Leiderman and Shapior's (1964) Physiological Approaches to Social Behavior. All the different methods used for measuring attitudes have their own strengths and limitations. One method may be more suitable than another for a given study and the same method may be inappropriate on another occasion. There is no one method, therefore, which is universally good or well-suited. However, going through the literature on attitude measurement, we find that self-report methods have been used most frequently. Techniques other than self-report have been tried and their applicability has been proven and advocated. But in practice, the pencil-and-paper type of self-report measures have stolen the scene to this day.

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Scales of Measurement
To have more refined measures of attitudes than rough classifications of for and against, some scaling devices can be made use of. Before going into scaler measures of attitudes, we shall first discuss scales of measurement in general. Measurement is assignment of mathematical symbols to objects and events according to rules. In order to assign different symbols to different objects, one must be able to differentiate objects on a given aspect, attribute or property. Such differentiation may be rough and crude or may be refined and specific. You may, for instance, want just to classify objects, persons, or responses into different categories. A nominal scale will suffice for this purpose. The only criterion to assign "objects" to different categories of a nominal scale is whether the objects are the same or different with regard to the property being studied. To classify individuals, for example, according to the province they come from or according to the religion they belong to would constitute a nominal scale. If you assign numbers to the different categories in this scale, the numbers are just identification names. They are not amenable to mathematical operations like calculations of means, coefficients of correlation, etc. You can, of course, count the number of subjects under each category label (numeral or verbal) and find the modal category in which the highest number of individuals fall. You may also perform a test of association, if you categorized the individuals according to two (or more) attributes. For example, if you categorized individuals both according to their province and their religion, you could perform the Chi-square test to see if a particular province(s) tend(s) to be associated with a particular religion. If you want to know the relative positions of persons or objects with respect to a characteristic, you need an ordinal scale, in which individuals or objects are ranked as first, second, third, etc., depending on the more or less of the attribute possessed by the individuals or objects. The ordinal scale can state who has more or less of the attribute under study, but not how much more or how much less. If person P is ranked first, Q second, R third, etc., we cannot know if the difference between P and Q is or is not the

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same as the difference between, for instance, U and V; the magnitude of difference between any two consecutive ranks remains unknown and is likely to vary. An interval scale can tell us whether P is as much higher than Q as Y is than Z on a particular attribute. In other words, in an interval scale, the difference between any two adjacent positions is the same as the one between any other two adjacent positions. Thus, the interval scale is an improvement over the ordinal scale, even as the latter is over the nominal scale. There is another type of scale, called the ratio scale, which is commonly used in the physical sciences. To have a ratio scale the absolute zero point needs to be determined. A ten-inch rod can be said to be exactly twice as long as a five-inch one, because both the rods share a common starting point, namely, the real zero point. But in the subject matter of the social sciences, the zero point is arbitrary and, therefore, we cannot express relationships in terms of strict ratios. Psychophysics has made attempts, in limited areas, to establish absolute zero points. By and large, however, social sciences do not use ratio scales; they employ ordinal and interval scales in their studies.

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Hypothesis
1. Positive attitude of non-working women towards marriage. Yes, non-working womens have positive attitude towards marriage because they feel financially, morally, emotionally & physically secured after being married.

2. Negative attitude of working women towards marriage. Yes, working womens have negative attitude towards marriage because they dont want to get married at an early age & they first want to establish their carrier.

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REVIEW
1. Fiona L. Tasker City University, London Martin P. M. Richards University of Cambridge
Studies of the long-term influence of parental divorce on adolescents' attitudes toward marriage and actual marriage patterns are reviewed. It is suggested that certain circumstances of parental divorce are associated with more negative views of marriage (particularly if divorce is associated with parental conflict and deteriorating parent-child relationships). However, it is likely that parental divorce has the opposite indirect effect of increasing the likelihood of early marriage for some children of divorce via lowered educational prospects and subsequently reduced socioeconomic status, early home leaving, and earlier involvement in heterosexual relationships. Possible alternative reasons for these divergent trends in attitudes toward marriage and marital prospects of children of divorce are discussed. First, whether some adolescents hold negative attitudes toward marriage and remain single, whereas others marry early; second, whether initially negative attitudes toward marriage change as a result of the adolescent's experience of heterosexual relationships and entry into adulthood.

2. International Social Survey

Using 2002 International Social Survey Program data, this study examines (1) whether the association between womens economic resources (full-time job, high income, and college degree) and their attitudes toward marriage differ across 31 countries and (2) whether states approaches on womens employment are associated with how economic resources affect womens attitudes toward marriage. Country-level differences in gender inequality in the labor market and in support for dual-earner couples affect how women

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view marriage, which may have been one of the unexplored factors affecting recent demographic trends across countries. The results show that for women in countries with generous public childcare services, the negative effect of full-time employment is weaker and the positive effect of education is stronger than those in countries with poor public childcare services. In contrast, the availability of a long parental leave strengthens the association between womens high income and their negative attitudes toward marriage. These findings suggest that states commitment in challenging the gendered division of laborrather than expecting employed mothers to take time off of their workis a vital element in making marriage more attractive to women with more economic resources.

3. Changing Attitudes Toward Marriage and Children in Six Countries Zoya Gubernskaya University of California-Irvine
This article examines changes in attitudes toward marriage and children in Austria, (West) Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the U.S. using the data from the 1988, 1994, and 2002 waves of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Consistent with the ideas of the second demographic transition and the rise of postmaterialism, public opinion in these countries is shifting away from traditional norms of universal marriage and childbearing. Female, never married, better educated, employed, and relatively secularized individuals hold less traditional views about marriage and children in all countries. Furthermore, attitudes of married and never married in Austria and Germany, males and females in the U.S. became more polarized, which might be attributed to public policies to increase fertility and promote traditional marriage in these countries. Large unexplained cross-national differences also point at the importance of contextual factors for understanding recent changes in support for marriage and children.

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4. By Marcette Pule'
Whilst societal trends are creating ambivalent attitudes towards marriage, adolescents are in the process of forming their ambitions towards their future marital relationships. This dissertation explores teenagers' perspective of marriage and family life. Through a literature review this dissertation, identifies the process of attitude formation towards marriage. An understanding of marriage follows, as the current marriage shapes adolescent's future experiences. A five-point liker scale questionnaire Marriage and Family Attitude Survey' developed by Martin & Martin, 1981 was administered amongst a sample of 198 (form five) students across several Maltese church schools and public schools (Junior Lyceums). Comparative analysis of the results across gender and between Maltese and American cultures, indicate that female Maltese adolescents have the most positive attitudes towards marriage. Adolescents' ambitions for forming their marriage, point towards a marriage with similar processes as the modern marriage identified by Clulow (l996); a marriage that is interlocked by its privatization, the pursuit of the egalitarian dream, the rise of relativism and the shift from rights to responsibilities. These ambitions exist within their general wish for the continuation of certain traditional practices in the midst of a substantial level of acceptance of the non-traditional marital orientations of cohabitation, separation, premarital sex, similar to American counterparts. Changes in the marital lifestyle, family life and gender issues are likely to occur.

5. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead David Popenoe Introduction

The current cultural climate in the United States is not conducive to strong, lasting marriages and childrearing by stable two-parent families. If we hope to overcome the increasing social and economic impoverishment of our nations young people, the tide of

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divorce, fatherlessness, and out-of-wedlock childbearing must be stemmed. As a first step, it is critical that we listen to what our young people are saying. What are the attitudes of American teenagers about marriage, cohabitation and children, and how have these attitudes changed in recent decades? The period for which we have good trend data, and the focus of this review, is 19751995. During this period American teens have expressed a growing esteem for marriage, family and monogamy. In thinking about the future, an increasing number of teens say that marriage and family life are "extremely important" to them. Most want their marriages to be lifelong. Yet there is cause for much concern. Teens and young adults today are pessimistic about the possibility of actually having a stable, two-parent household, and increasingly they do not think their marriages in fact will last a lifetime. Further, many teens have become highly tolerant of out-of-wedlock childbearing, singleparent childrearing and no marital cohabitation. They do not seem to fully grasp the economic, social and personal costs of single parenthood. This review includes statistics from a variety of surveys of American teenagers. Much of the information comes from the Monitoring the Future surveys of high school seniors, conducted annually since 1975 by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.

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METHODS
Description of Questionnaire
The title of the project is Attitude towards marriage of working and non working women.

In this project Direct Questioning Method has been used. 20 questions were replied by each woman in Yes, No & Cant Say. The questions asked were based on financial status, social, cultural, moral & relationship. For example, Is marriage a Sin? Yes, No & Cant Say.

Sampling
Attitude towards marriage of working & non-working women is the title of the project. In this project Direct Questioning Method has been used. For this 28 samples were collected out of which 14 were from working women & 14 were from non-working women. The age of the womens from whom samples were collected is between 25-35.

Data Analysis

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Table No.1
No. of Questionnaire 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Yes 12 13 11 8 11 12 11 13 11 13 11 7 9 11 Working No 8 7 9 10 7 7 9 7 9 6 9 13 11 7 Yes 7 10 11 10 10 11 12 13 10 12 12 9 9 10 Non working No 13 10 7 10 7 7 8 5 9 7 8 11 9 10

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Graph of working womens reply

14 12 10 8 Working Yes 6 4 2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Working No

Graph-1 Graph of non-working womens reply

14 12 10 8 Non working Yes 6 4 2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Non working No

Graph-2

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Comprison between working and non working women

14

12

10

Working Yes Working No

Non working Yes Non working No

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Graph-3

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Results
In this project direct questioning method has been used. For this 28 samples were collected & got divided into 2 groups i.e. Working & Non-Working women, 14 samples from each group.

Table No. 1
In this there are 3 main columns i.e. No. of Questionnaire, Reply by working women & Reply by Non-Working women. In Working women column there are 2 sub columns i.e. Yes & No. In this total number of Yes & No were counted which were answered by Working women. In Non-Working womens column there are also 2 sub-columns i.e. Yes & No. Similarly in this also their replies were counted.

Graph-1
In this, on the basis of the replies given Working & Non-Working women in Yes & No, histogram is plotted. On the x-axis number of working women is measured & on y-axis their reply in Yes & No are measured, where Yes & No are reflected by Blue & Red color respectively.

Graph-2
In this histogram is plotted on the basis of the reply given by Non-Working women in Yes & No. On the x-axis number of Non-Working women are measured while on y-axis the number of Yes & No which were replied by the Non-Working women & Yes & No are reflected in Blue & Red color respectively.

Graph-3
In this, the replies of Working & Non-Working women are compared by plotting histogram. On x-axis numbers of samples collected from Working & Non-Working women are measured while on y-axis number of replies given by Working & NonWorking women are measured.

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Interpretation Discussion
The title of the project is Attitude towards marriage of working & non-working women. In this project Direct Questioning method has been used. For this 28 samples were collected out of which 14 were from working women & 14 were from non-working women. 20 questions were replied by each woman in Yes, No & Cant Say. The age of the womens from whom samples were collected was between 25-40. The questions asked were based on financial status, social, cultural, moral & relationship. For example, Is marriage a Sin? Yes, No & Cant Say. The survey done by Fiona L.Tasker states that working womens have negative attitude towards marriage & sometimes it creates the circumstances of divorce which adversely affect the future of the children. An International Social Survey had been done in 31 countries & it states that dual-earner couples affect the womens view towards marriage. The findings states that commitment in challenging the gendered division of labor rather than expecting employe d womens to take off of their work. Therefore, working womens have negative attitude towards marriage. The survey which had been done in 6 countries Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherland & the U.S. states that better educated & employed womens have negative attitude towards marriage & unemployed womens have positive attitude towards marriage. The Survey done by Marcette Pule in Maltese & America states that non-working womens have positive attitude towards marriage. Non-working women believes in marital orientations of cohabitation, separation, premarital sex & also the responsibilities which are to be performed by the women after marriage. The Survey done by David Popenoe states that working women wants to be economically strong in todays world & they dont believe in marriage, cohabitation & children. They only believe in success. Therefore, working womens have negative attitude towards marriage.

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CONCLUSION
Overall conclusion is that working womens have negative attitude towards marriage. They dont prefer to marry at an early age. They only want to become successful. They dont believe in marital orientations of cohabitation, separation & premarital sex. These things are proved by International Social Survey, Survey in 6 countries & Marcette Pule Survey. And on the other hand, non-working womens have positive attitude towards marriage. They feel financially, morally, emotionally & physically secure after getting married. They believe in marital orientations of cohabitation, separation & premarital sex.

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RECOMMENDATION
In this project Direct Questioning Method has been used. In this 28 samples were collected. From each women 20 questions were asked based on financial status, social, cultural, moral & relationship. The project contains all the information related with the topic. It is written in easy language. With the help of graph & table analysis becomes easy to understand. Even the hypothesis which were made are acceptable. But it may be affected by the personal biasness. The analysis is based on small samples & prepared in shorter time period & less resources were used.

References
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/3/0/9/p103098_inde x.html http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/sop.2010.53.2.179 http://www.education.gov.mt/edu/edu_division/research/research_2002_marriage.htm WWW.GOOGLE.COM http://jar.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/3/340 http://www.jellofart.com/good-and-bad-attitudes-towards-marriage/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2173n47564x1081/ WWW.WIKIPIDIEA.COM

Appendix

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Questionnaire
NameOccupationAgeDateYes No Cant say

1. Marriage gives financial security. 2. Women consider at the time of marriage that to be a single is better than to being marry. 3. Do you agree that, it is better to have bad marriage than no marriage at all.? 4. Is 21 the right age of marriage? 5. Is it true that working women have more choices of men and can prefer men having other qualities than as employed person? 6. Do you believe in love marriage? 7. Is marriage a sin? 8. Do you believe in caste, creed or religion regarding marriages? 9. Do you want to marry with same profession guy? 10. Do you think that working women mostly prefer to marry a man of nuclear family rather than joint family? 11. Do you agree that compromise is another name of marriage? 12. Many social problems are faced by working women after marriage? 13. Do you think that love marriages are mostly done by working women? 14. Do you think that marriage is lifetime decision and filled with responsibilities? 15. Is it good to work after becoming mother? 16. Do you think housewife is a fulltime job for a woman after marriage?

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17. Do you think that love marriages are more successful than arrange marriages? 18. Are working women able to give proper knowledge to their children about our culture? 19. Do you agree with the statement that, the priority of non-working women is to marry a businessman.? 20. Do you agree with the fact that non-working women prefer to marry at early age?

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