Measuring Causal Attributions for Success and Failure

  • Timothy W. Elig
  • Irene Hanson Frieze
Chapter

Abstract

Although a great deal of research based on Weiner et al.’s (1971) model of causal attributions for success and failure events has been published during the 1970s, relatively little attention has been given to the question of how causal attributions should best be measured (Deaux & Farris, 1977; Smith, 1977). Although a few articles (e.g., Elig & Frieze, 1975; Frieze, 1976; Weiner, 1974; McHugh, 1975) have referred to the variety of measures used for assessing attributions, there has been no formal study of the implications of using one attribution measure over another, and researchers have tended to be unsystematic in their selection and use of the common techniques. This article explores the interrelationship of several measures of causal attributions to assess their validity and to make recommendations concerning the selection of instruments to be used in future studies of causal attributions for success and failure events.

Keywords

Response Measure Open Response Structure Measure Failure Event Scale Method 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1980

Authors and Affiliations

  • Timothy W. Elig
    • 1
  • Irene Hanson Frieze
    • 1
  1. 1.The University of PittsburghUSA

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