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A new way of looking at old things. An application of Guttman errors analysis to the study of environmental concern

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Abstract

This study shows how Guttman errors analysis can be applied to social research. In this work, the method is used in the study of environmental concern. The new instrument usefully chart also ways in which less evident forms of engagements may be recognized. The study uses data from the 2000 World Values Survey and International Social Survey Programme. First, Mokken Scale Analysis is applied to build a cumulative scale of mobilization for the defense of the environment. Second, Guttman errors are analyzed to identify specific patterns of activism. The analysis of the indexes enable the isolation of an often elusive phenomenon not shown by other techniques: the presence of individuals with a pronounced degree of activism but who do not share the attitudes of the majority of environmentalists. These particular patterns might constitute specific ways to relate to the environment. Guttman errors analysis can be fruitfully applied in measurement of attitudes or behavior. In particular, it can shed light on the presence of individual that sociological research should consider, study and label separately.

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Notes

  1. World Values Survey (2000) official data file v.20090914 World Values Survey Association (www.worldvaluessurvey.org) Aggregate File Producer: ASEP/JDS, Madrid.

  2. ISSP (2000)–"Environment II"—ZA No. 3440, for further information see at the website www.issp.org.

  3. For a complete description, see also Mokken (1971, pp. 182-184); Sijtsma and Molenaar (2002, pp. 49–61); Van Schuur (2011).

  4. For a reliable application, Rasch models require at least 20 items, but can be unreliable when the number of items is very small (Van Schuur 2003, pp. 143–144).

  5. For the analysis I used the software MSP5 with listwise deletion of missing cases (Molenaar and Sijtsma 2000, p. 50). The Mokken Scale Analysis eliminates from the procedure subjects that have always answered in the same way (i.e. always positively or always negatively) because these are subjects who do not make a choice on an order of preferences and are therefore not useful for construction of the scale.

  6. The following test included in MSP5 software have been considered: via restscore groups, restsplit groups, p-matrices and Htrans. Minimum group size was set to 2030 cases. Validation via restscore groups checks that the probability of the positive response increases with the score obtained by the subjects. For a review see Sijtsma and Molenaar (2002, pp. 98–111).

  7. To better evaluate the scale, the analysis was repeated across subgroups by gender, age, education, postmaterialism, cosmopolitism, political activism, altruism, social participation, and anti-racism. The analysis found no evidence of violations of Mokken’s assumptions of the scale (of non-decreasing monotonicity, MH, for a reference see Mokken 1971, pp. 132–133, 180–182, and 272–287). This analysis, not included here, is available upon request from the author.

  8. Further information on the data (and the complete questionnaire) is available at the websites of the survey: www.issp.org.

  9. As my goal was to demonstrate the use of Guttman errors analysis, I did not worried too much about finding recent data.

  10. For PAY, TAX and CUTS: “Very willing”; “Fairly willing” = 1, “Neither willing nor unwilling”; “Fairly unwilling; “Very unwilling” = 0.

  11. Elimination of this item would have increased the homogeneity of the entire scale (H-scale = 0.56). It should be pointed out, however, that this behaviour had already been analysed by Barnes and Kaase (1979) in their study on political activism, and it was preferable to keep it in the scale because it denoted a form of first-person commitment to the environment.

  12. This value corresponds to almost 18 % of all the respondents belonging to these categories.

  13. One might therefore inquire whether a lower education level is not linked to a greater degree of social conformism. For reasons of space such analysis is not described in the text, but is available from the author on request.

  14. This figure was obtained by summing the percentage of subjects who made no Guttman errors (63.9 %) and those who made only one (16.9 %). See last row of the table.

  15. This term is obviously to be understood in relation to Guttman’s definition of the perfect scale (Mokken 1971). Therefore, the term "dominance" refers to the level of difficulty of the items and to the ability of the subjects.

  16. This study does not address the problem of equivalence among scales. Its purpose is instead to construct a second scale able to measure (reasonably) the same latent dimension of the ISSP scale.

  17. Also verified was the existence of differences among the groups in Guttman errors according to the main structural dimensions. To obtain sufficiently large groups, those respondents who made 3 and 4 Guttman errors were combined in a single category. The sizes of the groups identified by the number of deviations from the perfect scale were: 0: 9668 cases; 1: 930; 2: 162; 3–4: 57. The only finding of a certain interest concerns gender: almost six-tenths (59.6 %) who made most errors (3–4) were male; and occupation: almost half (49.1 %) were employed full time and 10.5 % were students, while housewives and pensioners were under-represented. No significant differences emerged among the other variables (age, nation, education, income).

  18. The data used to plot this graph were obtained by performing a One-Way Anova procedure (F = 15.237, df = 4, Sig. = 0.000). It should be borne in mind, however, that the groups with most Guttman errors comprised a small number of cases so that the result should be interpreted with caution.

  19. An episode that has undoubtedly strengthened this image of animal rights campaigners was the murder in 2002 in Holland of the politician Pim Fortuyn by a youth with vegetarian-animal rights beliefs. Fortuyn was a supporter of factory farming, and also of fur-farming. However, recent surveys (Munro 2002) conducted in Australia, the United States and Great Britain have stressed that most action by these groups is non-violent.

  20. This statement should not be taken to imply the equivalence of NIMBY and environmental justice groups, which should obviously be analysed separately. My concern here is to emphasise the connection of these groups with the situation of the environment at local level. As Bullard and Johnson (2000, p. 558) note, protests relative to environmental justice concern “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies”. The birth of this movement can be dated to 1978 in the United States. The protest, led by Lois Gibbs, began when the residents of Love Canal discovered that they were living on top of an abandoned toxic waste disposal site (Dryzek 1997, pp. 177–178; Doyle and McEachern 1998, pp. 70–71).

  21. The differences between the averages were analysed using the One-Way Anova procedure. The level of significance of the differences between the averages (F test) was 0.000 for both the datasets.

  22. For the analysis of variance I used the variables already present in the two datasets and listwise deletion of missing cases.

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Acknowledgments

This work is in memory of Wijbrandt Van Schuur. I am also highly indebted to an anonymous reviewer, whose constructive and skillful comments strengthened the article enormously.

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  1. Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Università di Trento, Via Verdi, 26, 38122, Trento, Italy

    Enzo Loner

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Loner, E. A new way of looking at old things. An application of Guttman errors analysis to the study of environmental concern. Qual Quant 50, 823–847 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0177-1

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