COURSE DESCRIPTION

Psychology has since standardized methods for measuring attitudes, namely the Thurstone and Likert attitude scales. Psychologists typically measure the degree to which one has a positive versus a negative evaluation of the behavior using a set of bipolar semantic differential scales. Bipolar adjectives may include pleasant-unpleasant, wise-foolish, beneficial-harmful, necessary-unnecessary, useful-useless, and, more simply, good-bad. To measure therapists’ attitudes towards using a particular EBP at each patient session, the therapist could rate how beneficial versus harmful and pleasant versus unpleasant it would be for them to do so. These adjectives usually anchor a 5- or 7-point scale. The responses are aggregated and used to assign a respondent a single number representing how favorably or unfavorably the individual regards a behavior. There are several detailed guidelines on scale construction and analyses.