RESEARCH ISSUES

The following hypotheses, derived from eaiiier discussion, will be tested;

1. The test-retest reliability o f transituational value set is higher than that o f all-activated-values set on the given issue, but is lower than that of fixed-values set which includes values activated in both testing occasions with the same value status.

2. For those transituational values whose initial importance is not zero, their importance change amount between test and retest will correlate negatively with their initial transituational importance positions. For those transituational values whose initial importance is zero, their importance change amount will be at least less than that of those transituational values rated low in importance in the pretest.

3. The relationship between the importance change amount of activated values and their initial transituational rating positions are different from that predicted in 2.

In addition, the relationship between different kinds of activated values and attitudes will be explored in this study.

4.6 METHOD

Subjects

47 psychology students (35 females and 12 males) from Study 1 participated in the retest. All the subjects completed the importance ratings of transituational values and valuations on nuclear weapons (NW), but only 45 subjects finished valuation on abortion on demand (AB).

Procedure

Five weeks after Study 1, 24 subjects were retested in classroom after their lecture time. Those subjects who answered the questionnaire at their own time and own place in Study 1 were invited to participate in the re-test when they returned the questionnaires. After 5 weeks the questionnaire that was

that was

corresponding system. Subjects finished the questionnaire at their own time and own place, and then returned it to the author’s ofiBce. 45 questionnaires were sent out, and 23 were returned. The response rate of this part of subjects was 51%. Every subjects was paid two pounds when s/he returned the questionnaire.

Nomenclature o f Activated Values and Attitude Status

The relevance and affective status of activated values in pretest and retest were firstly examined by using two dimensions: (1) Do they remain activated in pretest and retest? (2) Among those that remain activated in both tests,does their affective status (i.e. as cost or reward values to the given situation) remain the same? According to these two dimensions, activated values were clasâfied into three categories: (1)

fixed values referring to those activated values that are activated in both pretest and retest, and also remain the same affective status (e.g. as cost value in both pretest and retest); (2) reverse values referring to those activated values that are activated in both pretest and retest but reverse their affective status (e.g. as cost value in one test and as reward value in the other); and (3) contingent values referring to those activated values that are activated in only one test but not the other test.

Similarly, the changing status of attitudes in terms of directions fi’om pretest to retest was classified into three categories: (1) unchanged attitude status referring to the same attitude direction in both pretest and retest (e.g. anti attitude in both tests); (2) changed attitude status referring to different attitude direction in pretest and retest (e.g. pro attitude in pretest and anti attitude in retest); and (3)

contingent attitude status referring to attitude direction changing fi-om one direction to zero attitude score (e.g. anti attitude in pretest and zero attitude score in retest) or vice versa. The sample was divided according to these categories. This resulted in 37 and 44 subjects who held unchanged attitude directions on NW and AB respectively, and 6 subjects who held changed attitude status on NW. These three groups are used to further examine the relations between attitudes and valuation scores. Subjects who held contingent attitude status were excluded because of small sample size.

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4.7 RESULTS

Stability in Transituational Value Set and Activated Value Set

An index o f transituational value set stability was obtained for each respondent by correlating her/his transituational importance ratings of the 65 values in pretest with those made in retest. Similarly, an index of aU-activated-values set stability was computed for each respondent by correlating her/his valuation scores of all activated values rated in pretest and retest. Also, an index of fixed-values set stability was computed for each respondent by correlating her/his valuation scores of fixed values rated in pretest and retest. Reqwndents whose number of fixed values were less than 3 were eliminated, because the minimum sample size required for computing correlation coefficient is 3. The median reliabilities of these value sets are reported in Table 4.1.

Because the reliability rep re sse d by the correlation coefficient was not a ratio variable, sign tests were used to examine the difference between the reliability of transituational value sets and that o f all- activated-values sets, and that of fixed-values sets. The results which are also reported in Table 4.1, confirm Hypothesis 1: The test-retest reliability of transituational value sets is higher than that of all- activated-values sets but lower than that of fixed-values sets.

Table 4.1 Median Tesi-Reiest Reliabilities and Sign Tests on the Reliabilities o f Transituational Value Sets and Activated Value Sets

Transituational All-activated-values set Fixed-values set value set (n=47) NW (n=47) AB (n=45) NW (n=42) AB (n=36)

Median Reliability .78 .40 .43 .95 .92

Sign tests of the reliabilities o f activated value sets (RA) with the reliabilities of transituational value sets (RT)

N (RA > RT) 5 3 30 25

N (R A < R T ) 41 42 12 11

Ties(RA = RT) 1 0 0 0

z 5.16 5.66 2.62 2.17

p(2-tailed) .0001 .0001 .01 .03

Frequency distributions o f activated values. The test-retest reliability of integrated valuation scores o f the whole set of activated values was .77 (p < .001) for NW and .86 (p < .001) for AB. Although the integrated valuation scores seemed to be stable, this did not mean that most activated values were fixed

values. The stability of activated values can also be examined from the frequency distributions of difierent kinds of activated values. Table 4.2 summarized the response rates of the three kinds of activated values, and average number of values for respondents who had one kind of activated values. The response rates in Table 4.2 show that almost every respondent had fixed values and contingent values, but only about half of the respondents had reverse values in both the situations. For the respondents who had one kind of activated values, the average number of fixed values was the highest and that of reverse values the lowest, leaving that of contingent values in between. This results suggest that for a typical respondent, her/his activated value set was mainly made up of fixed values and conting^t values with two or three, if any, reverse values.

NW(N=47) AB (N=45)

Activated values % No.T % N o.t

Fbced 97.9 8.6 100 8.4

Reverse 57.4 2.5 42.2 3.0

Contingent in pretest 91.5 7.6 93.3 7.1

Contingent in retest 87.2 4.5 95.6 6.3

t for the respondents who have the kind of values.

Change in Transituational Values and A ctivated Values

To test Hypothesis 2 (concerning the relation between change amount of transituational importance and initial transituational importance positions), an index of change amount was obtained by averaging the change amount (absolute value of the difference of importance ratings between test and retest) of transituational values with same initial transituational importance within each respondent for each initial transituational importance point (0 to 9). The mean change amounts of transituational importance across respondents are represented in Figure 4.1. As predicted, for those transituational values whose initial importance is not zero, the higher initially rated importance the less change from pretest to retest. The change amount of transituational values correlated significantly negatively with their initial importance positions (r = -.44,/? <.001). For those transituational values whose initial importance is zero, they show similar change amount to those rated middle and less change amount than those rated low in importance. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported by these results.

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