Values as Predictors of Attitudes and Behavior: Is there a Significant Effect of the Order of Measurement? Cover Image

Vrijednosti kao prediktori stavova i ponašanja: postoji li utjecaj redoslijeda mjerenja?
Values as Predictors of Attitudes and Behavior: Is there a Significant Effect of the Order of Measurement?

Author(s): Ivana Ferić
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar
Keywords: Values; attitudes:predictive validity; order of measurement

Summary/Abstract: Recent research suggests that the value system we construct is not entirely stable but very much dependent on the context in which we are asked to do it. Or, more precisely, that the individual value priorities change with the specific situational context. This work sought to examine the possible effect of situational context on the measurement of values, and to investigate if values measured under the effect of context can predict the attitudes better than the values measured without such context. An experiment was conducted, with subjects divided into 4 treatment and 4 control conditions. In the first session, the Schwartz Value Survey was used to measure the hierarchy and structure of values in all groups. In the second session, an additional four instruments (attitude and behavior measures) were used to create four different types of context, each targeted at one of the higher-order value types according to Schwartz. Subjects in treatment conditions were asked to complete one of the attitude/behavior measures before completing the Value Survey. Subjects assigned to control conditions filled out the questionnaires in the reversed order. Results show that the employed situational context produced significant changes in the rated importance of several specific values, but those changes did not affect the relative hierarchies of four higher-order types of values, or the 10 basic motivational types in any of the groups. As to the predictive strength of values, it was observed that the application of the attitude/behavior measure prior to the measurement of values did produce higher correlations between values, attitudes and behavior in two treatment situations, resulting in a higher predictive strength of values.

  • Issue Year: 16/2007
  • Issue No: 87+88
  • Page Range: 51-71
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Croatian