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Points of Neutrality in Social Attitudes of Delinquents and Non-Delinquents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Ruth Bishop
Ruth Bishop*
Affiliation:
College Entrance Examination Board Princeton, New Jersey
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Abstract

Delinquent boys are compared with non-delinquents with respect to their attitudes towards a series of “good” and “bad” social acts, by the use of scales having rational origins of measurement. A new technique, essentially an extension of Thurstone's Method of Successive Intervals, is found to give results similar to Horst's Method of Balanced Values. Significant differences in mean attitude between the two groups are not found.

Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1940 , pp. 35 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Dr. M. W. Richardson for his invaluable encouragement and counsel in this study. This paper is a part of a dissertation accepted by the faculty of the Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

References

† Simpson, R. M. Attitudes towards the ten commandments. J. soc. Psychol., 1933, 4, 223-230.

Simpson, R. M. Attitudes of teachers and prisoners toward seriousness of criminal acts. J. crim. Law Criminol., 1934, 25, 76-83.

* Thurstone, L. L. The method of paired camparisons for social values. J. abno~m. (soc.) Psychol., 1927, 20, 384-400.

† Durea, M. A. An experimental study of attitudes towards juvenile delinquency. J. appl. Psychol., 1934, 17, 522-534.

‡ Horst, A. P. A method for determining the absolute affective values of a series of stimulus situations. J. educ. Psychol., 1932, 23, 418-440

‖ Thurstone, L. L. A law of comparative judgment. Psychol. Rev., 1927, 24, 273-286.

* Saffir, M. A. A comparative study of scales constructed by three psychophysical methods. Psychometrika, 1937, 2, 179-191

† Kelley, T. L. Statistical method. New York: Macmillan Company, 1924, equation 55, p. 101.

* Guilford, J. P. Psychometric methods. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936. Pp. 59-63.

† Shaw, Clifford & MeKay, H. D. Juvenile delinquency and urban areas. (Unpublished monograph prepared at the Institute for Juvenile Research. Chietgo, 1938.)

* The author wishes to thank Dr. A. W. Brown and his students for administering the schedule to the adult delinquent groups.

* Richardson, M. W. Multidimensional psychophysics. Psychol. Bull., 1938, 35, 659-660.