Attitude surveys represent one of the foundational methodologies in empirical social science, organizational psychology, and behavioral economics, providing a systematic mechanism to quantify latent subjective states. By translating internal psychological dispositions into measurable scalar data, these instruments enable researchers and practitioners to evaluate human evaluation, sentiment, and predispositions toward specific targets, policies, or phenomena. Understanding the design, theoretical underpinning, and psychometric validation of attitude surveys is indispensable for conducting rigorous empirical inquiry across diverse academic and professional domains.
Attitude Survey
1. Concise Definition
An attitude survey is a standardized psychometric instrument designed to elicit, quantify, and analyze an individual’s or collective group’s cognitive beliefs, affective feelings, and behavioral predispositions toward a defined psychological object, person, group, policy, or institution. Utilizing structured self-report formats, it converts intangible mental evaluations into numerical or categorical variables suitable for inferential statistical analysis.
Unlike simple informational questionnaires that document objective demographic facts or verifiable behaviors, an attitude survey explicitly investigates the latent evaluative dimension of human consciousness. It operates on the presumption that attitudes possess measurable direction (positive, neutral, or negative) and intensity (from weak inclinations to deeply entrenched convictions). By presenting respondents with calibrated stimuli—such as declarative statements or semantic pairs—the survey captures the underlying valence of a respondent’s mindset.
In applied and academic contexts, attitude surveys bridge the gap between abstract psychological constructs and observable data. They serve not merely as descriptive barometers of current sentiment, but as predictive tools designed to forecast behavioral intentions, evaluate the impact of institutional interventions, and track socio-political cultural shifts over time.
2. Etymology & Linguistic Origin
The term attitude traces its linguistic lineage to the Late Latin noun aptitūdō, meaning “fitness,” “adaptation,” or “suitability,” derived from the adjective aptus (“fitting” or “joined”). During the Renaissance, the word passed into early modern Italian as attitudine, where it took on a specialized technical meaning within the visual arts to denote the physical posture, pose, or bodily arrangement of a painted or sculpted figure, expressive of an underlying emotional or spiritual state.
By the seventeenth century, the term entered French as attitude before migrating into the English language. In English, it retained its original aesthetic connotation of physical posture for over a century. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, English philosophers and naturalists—most notably Charles Darwin and early mental philosophers—began using “attitude” metaphorically to describe a “posture of the mind” or a settled mental disposition directed toward an external stimulus.
The companion noun survey originates from the Anglo-French surveeir, compounded from the prefix sur- (“over” or “above”, from Latin super) and veeir (“to see”, from Latin vidēre). Historically signifying a comprehensive inspection, visual overview, or systematic land demarcation, the term was absorbed into the nascent behavioral sciences during the early twentieth century. When paired, the phrase attitude survey designated an empirical methodology designed to “oversee” or map the internal landscape of human evaluation.
3. Pronunciation & Grammatical Form
In standard English phonetics, the term is pronounced as a compound noun phrase:
- Received Pronunciation (British English): /ˈæt.ɪ.tjuːd ˈsɜː.veɪ/
- General American: /ˈæt.əˌtud ˈsɜrˌveɪ/
Grammatically, attitude survey operates as an open compound noun. Within syntax, “attitude” functions as an attributive noun (or noun adjunct) modifying the primary head noun “survey.” It is fully countable in both singular (“an attitude survey was administered”) and plural forms (“multiple attitude surveys were benchmarked”).
Common academic collocations include transitive verbs such as to construct, to validate, to administer, to deploy, and to standardize an attitude survey. Prepositional framing typically specifies the target of appraisal, utilizing “attitude survey toward [concept]” (e.g., “an attitude survey toward organizational change”) or “attitude survey regarding [policy]” (e.g., “an attitude survey regarding environmental regulations”).
4. Detailed Conceptual Explanation
To fully conceptualize an attitude survey, one must examine the psychological nature of an “attitude.” In modern psychometrics, an attitude is defined as a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Because attitudes are internal, unobservable mental events, they cannot be registered via direct physical instrumentation. The attitude survey acts as a measurement proxy, using calibrated self-report items to infer the underlying latent construct.
The conceptual framework of an attitude survey relies heavily on the classical Tripartite Model, also known as the ABC model of attitudes. According to this paradigm, an attitude is not a monolithic impulse, but a construct composed of three interrelated dimensions: the Affective component (emotional reactions, feelings, and physiological visceral responses toward the target), the Behavioral component (overt actions, verbalized commitments, and behavioral intentions regarding the object), and the Cognitive component (factual beliefs, assumptions, values, and rational appraisals associated with the object). A rigorous attitude survey designs distinct item clusters to address each dimension, ensuring broad construct coverage.
Furthermore, attitude surveys must address the psychometric properties of strength, accessibility, and ambivalence. An individual may hold an attitude that is highly accessible—retrieved instantaneously from memory with profound conviction—or an attitude that is peripheral, poorly formed, and volatile. Moreover, individuals frequently experience psychological ambivalence, harboring simultaneously positive cognitive assessments and negative affective emotions toward the same stimulus (such as technological automation in the workplace). Sophisticated survey designs incorporate split-item structures or multidimensional response vectors to separate genuine neutrality from conflicted ambivalence.
Finally, the conceptual scope of attitude surveys is bounded by the distinction between explicit and implicit mental states. Standard attitude surveys measure explicit attitudes—those evaluations of which the individual is consciously aware and capable of articulating through reflective self-report. They are bounded by human introspection and susceptibility to motivational distortion, differing markedly from indirect implicit measures (such as reaction-time paradigms) that assess automatic, unconscious associations.
5. Historical Development
The systematic quantification of attitudes emerged in the late 1920s, a period marked by fierce skepticism regarding whether subjective mental states could ever satisfy the criteria of mathematical measurement. In 1928, American psychometrician Louis Leon Thurstone published his seminal paper, Attitudes Can Be Measured, demonstrating that internal psychological states could be arranged along an objective, linear continuum using his Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals. Thurstone’s pioneering work proved that subjective evaluations adhered to mathematical laws of scaling, effectively launching attitude measurement as a formal discipline.
In 1932, organizational psychologist Rensis Likert introduced a major procedural breakthrough with his landmark monograph, A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes. Likert eliminated the complex and labor-intensive judge-based scaling required by Thurstone’s method, proposing instead a simplified summated scale. By asking respondents to register their level of agreement across a standardized five-point gradient (ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”), the Likert scale dramatically democratized attitude surveys, establishing the universal paradigm for survey construction that persists today.
During the mid-twentieth century, methodological sophistication deepened. Louis Guttman formulated the scalogram analysis in 1944, introducing deterministic cumulative scales where endorsing an extreme attitude item systematically guaranteed agreement with all preceding, less extreme items. In 1957, Charles Osgood, George Suci, and Percy Tannenbaum published The Measurement of Meaning, unveiling the Semantic Differential technique. This approach mapped attitudes across semantic spaces anchored by bipolar adjectives (e.g., good–bad, strong–weak, active–passive), demonstrating that evaluative judgments universally load onto identifiable underlying dimensions.
The post-World War II era witnessed widespread institutionalization of attitude surveys across governmental and corporate spheres. Samuel Stouffer’s multi-volume work The American Soldier (1949) applied large-scale survey methodologies to analyze military morale and racial attitudes, while commercial enterprises such as the Gallup Organization and academic bodies like the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan refined probability sampling. By the twenty-first century, the transition from paper-based questionnaires to automated online platforms, mobile applications, and adaptive computerized testing further transformed the administration and speed of global attitude research.
6. Theoretical Foundations
The architecture and analytical utility of attitude surveys are governed by foundational theories in social psychology and human decision-making. Chief among these is the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen in 1975, and its subsequent extension, the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991). These frameworks stipulate that behavior is directly determined by behavioral intentions, which are shaped by two primary factors: attitudes toward the behavior and subjective social norms. By accurately measuring an individual’s explicit evaluation of an act along with their perceived behavioral control, an attitude survey becomes an indispensable empirical predictor of subsequent real-world behavior.
A second foundational pillar is Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory (1957). Festinger established that individuals experience acute psychological distress when they hold dissonant cognitions, or when their stated attitudes conflict with their observable actions. Attitude surveys operationalize this dynamic by documenting how shifts in information or social pressures lead individuals to adjust their explicit attitude ratings to restore internal cognitive harmony, providing a framework for tracking ideological evolution over time.
Furthermore, Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland’s Social Judgment Theory (1961) offers critical insights into how respondents interpret attitude survey statements. The theory posits that an individual’s prior involvement with an issue defines three zones: the latitude of acceptance, the latitude of non-commitment, and the latitude of rejection. When responding to survey items, respondents assimilate statements falling within their latitude of acceptance (viewing them as closer to their own view than they actually are) and contrast statements falling within their latitude of rejection (viewing them as radically opposed). Survey developers rely on this theory to craft balanced items that avoid inducing extreme contrast effects.
Finally, dual-process paradigms, such as Richard Petty and John Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), guide modern survey methodology. The ELM demonstrates that attitudes formed via the central route (deliberate, cognitive processing of arguments) are stable, resistant to counter-persuasion, and predictive of long-term behavior. In contrast, attitudes formed via the peripheral route (superficial cues, emotional appeals) are volatile. Attitude surveys designed with contextualizing prompts and consistency-checking probes can differentiate between structurally resilient core attitudes and transient, peripherally held impressions.
7. Key Components, Types & Dimensions
An attitude survey consists of structural dimensions, response formats, and methodological classifications that delineate its practical application. These components are categorized below:
- Scale Types & Formatting Paradigms:
- Likert and Likert-Type Scales: Summative scales measuring degrees of agreement, satisfaction, or frequency, typically employing 5-point or 7-point symmetrical anchors with an explicit neutral midpoint.
- Semantic Differential Scales: Evaluative continuums bounded by polar opposite adjectives (e.g., “Trustworthy – Untrustworthy”), measuring affective connotations.
- Thurstone Equal-Appearing Intervals: Items selected based on median ratings assigned by independent expert panels, where the respondent’s score reflects the average scale value of endorsed items.
- Guttman Scalograms: Hierarchical, cumulative statements designed such that agreeing with a high-order statement automatically denotes assent to all lower-order items.
- Evaluative Latent Dimensions:
- Cognitive Items: Probing specific beliefs, rational trade-offs, and objective assessments (e.g., “This policy reduces overall operational risk”).
- Affective Items: Probing emotional states, feelings of security, anxiety, or enthusiasm (e.g., “I feel valued by my department head”).
- Conative/Intentional Items: Probing self-reported behavioral commitments and future intentions (e.g., “I plan to remain with this company for the next two years”).
- Administration Methodologies:
- Cross-Sectional Surveys: Capturing snapshots of attitudes across a defined population at a single point in time to evaluate current climate or market position.
- Longitudinal and Panel Surveys: Tracking the same cohort across recurring waves to measure attitude change, stability, decay, or maturation over time.
- Self-Administered Questionnaires (SAQ): Digital, online, or paper surveys administered without an interviewer, maximizing perceived anonymity and mitigating interviewer bias.
- Interviewer-Administered Surveys: Structured verbal protocols allowing clarification of complex items, though vulnerable to social-evaluative demand characteristics.
8. Examples & Illustrative Cases
To understand how attitude surveys operate in practice, consider the following three distinct scenarios across organizational, public health, and environmental spheres.
Case 1: Organizational Climate and Diversity Survey. A multinational corporation facing high employee turnover administers an organizational attitude survey to 15,000 employees. The instrument uses a 6-point Likert scale (eliminating the neutral midpoint to force a directional choice) measuring attitudes toward executive transparency, psychological safety, and equitable promotion paths. The survey reveals a profound divergence: while cognitive appraisals of company compensation are uniformly high, affective ratings concerning perceived managerial empathy are deeply negative. Consequently, leadership restructures frontline management coaching rather than revising salary bands, directly addressing the underlying affective driver of employee attrition.
Case 2: Public Health and Immunization Hesitancy. During an infectious disease outbreak, public health officials deploy an attitude survey to measure vaccine hesitancy among diverse demographic cohorts. Rather than merely asking “Will you take the vaccine?”, the survey separates cognitive risk evaluations (e.g., “The vaccine was developed too quickly to ensure safety”) from subjective normative pressures (e.g., “Most people who are important to me want me to get vaccinated”). The survey demonstrates that non-compliance is driven not by scientific skepticism, but by low institutional trust in regulatory oversight bodies. Health agencies consequently partner with trusted community and religious leaders rather than broadcasting generic clinical statistics.
Case 3: Environmental Policy and Consumer Sacrificial Willingness. An academic research institute designs an environmental attitude survey utilizing semantic differentials and Guttman-style thresholds. Citizens are presented with scenarios measuring their willingness to accept personal economic sacrifices (e.g., carbon taxes, vehicle restrictions) for ecological conservation. The resulting data illustrates that while 85% of respondents endorse abstract pro-environmental attitudes (“Preserving wilderness is vital”), assent plummets to under 20% once items introduce immediate personal financial burdens. This empirical insight highlights the crucial gap between abstract evaluative attitudes and concrete behavioral trade-offs.
9. Measurement & Assessment
Assessing the scientific validity of an attitude survey requires evaluating its psychometric properties. Without documented reliability and validity, survey results represent little more than arbitrary numerical noise.
Psychometric Reliability: Reliability refers to the internal consistency and stability of the survey measure across time and across items. Internal consistency is commonly evaluated through Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) or McDonald’s omega ($\omega$), where coefficients exceeding 0.70 are considered acceptable and those above 0.80 indicate strong scale coherence. High internal consistency ensures that all items assigned to a single subscale converge on the same psychological construct. Additionally, test-retest reliability assesses temporal stability by administering the same survey to a stable sample across a two-week interval, calculating the intra-class correlation coefficient.
Construct and Criterion Validity: Validity refers to whether the instrument genuinely measures the specific theoretical construct it claims to assess. Face and Content Validity are established through qualitative expert panels ensuring comprehensive coverage of the construct’s theoretical domain. Construct Validity is empirically evaluated using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to verify that survey items load onto their intended latent dimensions. Convergent Validity requires that the survey correlate moderately to strongly with alternative validated measures of the same construct, while Discriminant Validity (frequently tested via the Fornell-Larcker criterion or the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio of correlations) ensures that the survey does not correlate excessively with unrelated constructs (such as neuroticism or generalized negative affectivity).
Mitigation of Response Biases: Attitude surveys are inherently susceptible to systematic measurement errors that compromise validity. Among these, the most prevalent are:
- Acquiescence Bias: The general tendency of respondents to agree with statements regardless of content. This is counteracted by including balanced, reverse-scored items throughout the instrument.
- Social Desirability Bias: The inclination of participants to answer in a manner that will be viewed favorably by peers or researchers. This is mitigated through assured anonymity, self-administration, and incorporating the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale to detect and statistically control for impression management.
- Central Tendency and Extreme Response Styles: The habitual tendency to avoid extreme anchors or, conversely, to select only extreme poles. Utilizing clear anchor definitions and optimizing scale granularity (such as 7-point rather than 3-point scales) helps mitigate this distortion.
10. Applications & Practical Significance
The applications of attitude surveys extend across virtually every domain where human perception, judgment, and motivation govern outcomes.
In Organizational Development and Human Resources, attitude surveys provide quantitative diagnostics of organizational culture, employee engagement, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Instead of relying on anecdotal impressions, corporate leadership utilizes pulse surveys and annual climate assessments to identify systemic morale deficits, evaluate leadership efficacy, and refine talent retention initiatives.
In Public Policy and Political Science, attitude surveys serve as the empirical foundation for democratic governance and policy formulation. Polling institutes and government agencies track public sentiment regarding fiscal policies, social rights, international treaties, and criminal justice reform. These surveys inform legislative priorities, gauge the electoral viability of proposed laws, and diagnose ideological polarization across demographic strata.
In Consumer Behavior and Marketing Research, attitude surveys guide product development, brand equity tracking, and advertising efficacy. Marketers measure consumer perceptions regarding brand integrity, product utility, and price sensitivity. Understanding consumer attitudes toward sustainability or digital privacy enables firms to pivot messaging, address brand liabilities, and forecast product adoption rates before making capital investments.
In Clinical and Educational Psychology, attitude surveys evaluate pedagogical methods, academic self-efficacy, and therapeutic mindsets. Educational surveys measure student attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to identify early points of academic disengagement, while clinical instruments assess patient attitudes toward psychiatric treatment, directly predicting compliance with therapeutic regimens.
11. Research & Empirical Evidence
Empirical research on attitude surveys has generated an extensive body of literature analyzing the relationship between expressed attitudes and overt behaviors. Historically, the field was shaken by Richard LaPiere’s classic 1934 study. LaPiere traveled across the United States with a Chinese couple, visiting 251 hotels and restaurants; they were refused service only once. Six months later, LaPiere sent an attitude survey to the exact same establishments, asking if they would accept Chinese guests. Over 90% of the respondents replied with an emphatic “No.” This landmark experiment revealed a stark, troubling disconnect between recorded survey attitudes and real-time situational actions.
In 1969, Allan Wicker published an influential meta-analysis of over 40 empirical studies, concluding that attitudes and behaviors were often only weakly correlated, with correlation coefficients rarely exceeding $r = 0.30$. Wicker’s work raised profound questions regarding the predictive utility of attitude surveys, prompting a methodological overhaul within psychometrics and social psychology.
The resolution to this paradox came through the work of Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, who introduced the Principle of Compatibility (or Principle of Aggregation). They demonstrated that the apparent attitude-behavior gap was primarily a measurement artifact. Early researchers frequently attempted to predict a specific, concrete behavior (e.g., attending a rally next Tuesday) using an extremely broad, general attitude survey (e.g., general attitudes toward civic duty). When researchers measure attitudes with the exact same level of specificity as the target behavior—accounting for Target, Action, Context, and Time (TACT)—the empirical correlation routinely surges past $r = 0.60$ to $0.70$.
Modern research utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM) and longitudinal panel designs consistently reaffirms that psychometrically sound attitude surveys exhibit substantial predictive validity. Contemporary empirical studies in organizational psychology indicate that aggregate employee attitude metrics account for a significant proportion of variance in organizational citizenship behaviors, customer satisfaction ratings, and voluntary turnover rates, confirming the enduring power of well-calibrated attitude instruments.
12. Cultural & Cross-Cultural Considerations
Administering attitude surveys across disparate linguistic, cultural, and geographic contexts introduces severe methodological challenges that require rigorous harmonization. Foremost among these is achieving Measurement Invariance across cultural groups. To legitimately compare attitude scores between populations, researchers must verify three progressive levels of equivalence:
- Configural Invariance: Confirming that the underlying factor structure (the number of latent constructs and pattern of item loadings) is conceptually identical across all cultural groups.
- Metric (Weak) Invariance: Ensuring that the factor loadings of survey items are numerically equal across groups, meaning respondents interpret the meaning of the survey questions in the exact same manner.
- Scalar (Strong) Invariance: Establishing that item intercepts are equal across groups, ensuring that individuals with the same level of the underlying latent attitude obtain the same observed score regardless of cultural background.
Cultural response styles significantly skew attitude survey data if uncorrected. Extensive cross-cultural research indicates that respondents from individualistic cultures (such as the United States or Western Europe) frequently exhibit a higher propensity for Extreme Response Styles (ERS), disproportionately utilizing the extreme poles of Likert scales to assert personal agency and strong conviction. Conversely, respondents from collectivist cultures (such as Japan, China, or South Korea) display a pronounced Moderate Response Style (MRS) or midpoint picking. In these contexts, humility, harmony, and non-confrontational communication make extreme endorsements culturally discordant.
Linguistic translation presents another major source of error. Literal translations of attitude statements frequently distort the semantic nuances and emotional connotations of the original items. International best practices necessitate rigorous back-translation protocols, parallel decentering, and cognitive interviewing with native speakers. This ensures that idioms, metaphors, and evaluative adjectives possess complete functional and ecological equivalence in the destination language.
13. Criticisms, Debates & Limitations
Despite their widespread adoption, attitude surveys remain the subject of significant scholarly debate and methodological critique. Prominent among these concerns is the issue of Common Method Variance (CMV). Because attitude surveys rely almost exclusively on cross-sectional, self-report methodologies, observed correlations between independent and dependent variables are frequently inflated by the shared measurement technique rather than authentic psychological connections. Methodologists emphasize the use of procedural remedies—such as temporal separations between surveys or integrating objective behavioral metrics—to counter this vulnerability.
Another fundamental critique centers on Introspective Blindness and the construct of the “constructed attitude.” Drawing on cognitive psychology and neuroscience, critics argue that individuals do not possess pre-computed, stable attitude scores stored neatly in mental retrieval bins. Instead, when presented with a survey prompt, respondents frequently construct a temporary attitude on the fly, heavily influenced by immediate context, item framing, preceding questions, and even ambient environmental conditions. This instability challenges the foundational psychometric premise that attitude surveys reflect durable, permanent cognitive traits.
Furthermore, the problem of survey fatigue and straightlining in an era of digital survey saturation undermines data integrity. Faced with lengthy, repetitive survey batteries, participants often resort to satisficing—selecting answers rapidly without cognitive contemplation, generating random response patterns or identical responses across entire matrices. Finally, the persistence of the attitude-behavior gap reminds researchers that human action is shaped by immediate situational constraints, cognitive biases, habit, and social pressure, which self-reported attitudes alone can never fully encapsulate.
14. Related Terms & Distinctions
The term attitude survey is frequently conflated with related empirical methodologies and psychological constructs. The following distinctions delineate its boundaries:
- Attitude Survey vs. Opinion Poll: An opinion poll typically captures brief, immediate, and transactional surface reactions to narrow, topical events or candidates (e.g., “Do you approve of the current foreign trade agreement?”). In contrast, an attitude survey explores deeply rooted psychological orientations, employing multi-item validated scales to map the affective, cognitive, and intentional dimensions of a broader construct.
- Attitude Survey vs. Personality Inventory: A personality inventory (such as the NEO-PI-R or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) measures stable, biologically rooted psychological traits and behavioral patterns that remain largely invariant across a lifespan. An attitude survey measures an individual’s evaluation of an external target, which is fundamentally dynamic, context-dependent, and subject to persuasion and modification.
- Attitude Survey vs. Behavioral Observation: Behavioral observation records objective, observable actions executed in natural or laboratory settings without relying on participant introspection. An attitude survey records subjective, internal self-evaluations, capturing the cognitive and emotional precursors to action that cannot be visually observed.
- Attitude Survey vs. Satisfaction Survey: A satisfaction survey is fundamentally retrospective, assessing whether an experience, product, or service met a predetermined cognitive expectation. An attitude survey is broader, evaluating ongoing value orientations, affective predispositions, and prospective behavioral intentions.
15. Summary & Key Takeaways
An attitude survey is a psychometric instrument designed to measure latent human evaluations across cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. Grounded in foundational models such as the Theory of Planned Behavior and the ABC Tripartite Model, these surveys translate internal mental states into quantitative data suitable for empirical analysis.
The historical evolution of attitude surveys reflects a continuous drive toward psychometric precision, from Thurstone’s initial measurement proofs to Likert’s summated scales and contemporary structural equation modeling. However, the validity of any attitude survey hinges entirely on rigorous psychometric hygiene—ensuring high internal consistency, construct validity, and the systematic mitigation of response styles such as acquiescence and social desirability bias.
When utilized across organizational, clinical, governmental, and market environments, attitude surveys provide profound diagnostic and predictive intelligence. Nevertheless, researchers must account for cultural response styles, achieve measurement invariance across global populations, and recognize the boundaries imposed by introspective limitations and the attitude-behavior gap.
In summary, while attitude surveys cannot serve as an uncritical mirror of human behavior, they remain an indispensable, highly sophisticated instrument for mapping human perception. When designed with theoretical rigor, administered with psychometric care, and interpreted within their ecological limits, attitude surveys provide an empirical window into the beliefs, feelings, and intentions that shape human action.
References
- Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
- Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
- Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research. Addison-Wesley.
- Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 22(140), 5–55.
- Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The Measurement of Meaning. University of Illinois Press.
- Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60214-2
- Thurstone, L. L. (1928). Attitudes can be measured. American Journal of Sociology, 33(4), 529–554. https://doi.org/10.1086/214483
- Wicker, A. W. (1969). Attitudes versus actions: The relationship of verbal and overt behavioral responses to attitude objects. Journal of Social Issues, 25(4), 41–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1969.tb00619.x