ERIC Number: ED273679
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1986-May-3
Pages: 27
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Measurement of Nuclear War Attitudes: Methods and Concerns.
Mayton, Daniel M., II
Measures of adults' attitudes toward nuclear war are briefly discussed, and Mayton's Modified World Affairs Questionnaire (MWAQ) is described. The 23-item MWAQ was developed from Novak and Lerner's World Affairs Questionnaire, a nuclear war attitude measure by Mayton and Delamater, and related interview items by Jeffries. When the MWAQ was administered to 178 college students, five robust factors emerged: civil defense; escalation; nuclear war outcome; probability and worry; and patriotism. The five-subscale MWAQ was then administered to 615 undergraduate students. Test-retest reliability was acceptable, but internal consistency values for the patriotism subscale were low. McClenney and others developed a 42-item questionnaire based on Fishbein and Ajzen's expectancy value model applied to nuclear freeze attitudes. When the four reliable MWAQ subscales were administered to 97 undergraduates and correlated with the eight McClenney subscales, 14 of 32 correlations were significant. Hamilton and others' nuclear threat philosophy scale measured eight stances: deterrentist; survivalist; romanticist; hedonist; eliminationist; stoic; disarmist; and altruistic fatalist. These subscales and the four reliable MWAQ subscales were administered to 46 undergraduates, and only four of 32 coefficients were correlated. Five tables and definitions of the eight nuclear threat attitudes are appended. (GDC)
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A