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The changing nature of attitude constructs: an application of multiple correspondence analysis on gender role attitudes

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Abstract

Attitude change is frequently measured by comparing respondents’ scores on the same instrument at different points in time. However, there is a variety of methodological challenges in measuring attitude change: when respondents’ handling of the questionnaire or their understanding of the items change, the comparability of constructs is threatened. This paper proposes the investigation of systematic methodological variation over time by multiple correspondence analysis. Visualizing respondents’ ‘cognitive maps’ facilitates the exploration of both changes in the underlying structure of attitude constructs—that is, changes in meaning—as well as data quality. The approach is illustrated with the analysis of two item batteries on gender role attitude from the BHPS and the BSA from the beginning of the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Both data sets exhibit similar structural changes - more methodological variation and increasing complexity of the attitude construct. The comparison of latent structures over time provides useful information about the nature of change in social constructs.

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Notes

  1. MCA also provides a numerical solution, which is not shown here as the essential information is conveyed by the respective figures.

  2. This additional axis is not obtained through statistical rotation; it is just a visual aid to interpretation.

  3. The MCA maps of the waves in between are not shown here, but yielded similar results that confirm the hypothesis of a development towards the predominance of method-induced variance. It has to be kept in mind that we are looking at the same respondents at the three time points shown here, so that the change cannot be attributed to sampling variance.

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  1. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Bonn, Lennéstr. 27, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    Alice Barth

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Barth, A. The changing nature of attitude constructs: an application of multiple correspondence analysis on gender role attitudes. Qual Quant 50, 1507–1523 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0218-9

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