Section 4: Developing your questions

Survey attitudes

While many surveys are primarily concerned with what people do, we are also concerned with what motivates their actions. In this section we are going to look at how to measure attitudes.

Generally this is done using some type of scale consisting of a number of statements. An attitude statement should polarise opinion; it should be possible to imagine two people who would take opposing views. For example, the statement 'There is too little spent on public transport' is capable of being either strongly agreed with or strongly disagreed with.

Obviously there is no physical entity that we can call an attitude - an attitude has many dimensions. We will concentrate on three aspects of an attitude:

knowledge
feelings
strength of feeling.

Knowledge

To adopt an attitude towards something we must know it exists. Often people will offer answers to questions that they have no idea about. For example, if you ask how strongly people agree with the statement 'My GP deserved the pay rise they received recently', respondents will agree or disagree regardless of whether they know whether their GP actually received a pay rise or not.

Feelings

This is where the second dimension comes in. If I know about something, do I care enough to express a view? Do I have 'feelings' about it? For example, you may know that some professional footballers are very well rewarded, but you may not care. On the other hand, you may have very strong feelings that this is fair reward or not.

Strength of feeling

This is the third dimension of attitude testing. Your respondent knows about something, and is prepared to express a view (feeling) about it, but you want to know how strongly they hold that view. Ideally, we would produce a statement that could test how long they have held a particular view and how stable that view is. In practice, we tend to use the word 'strongly' to indicate the strength of feeling.

London bus

Activity

Look at the following list and think about those that would make good statements to measure people's attitudes to public transport.

Public transport is important to reduce congestion.
I would be more likely to use public transport if it was cheaper.
Free transport to people's homes from railway stations should be provided late at night.
Public transport increases our sense of community.
Public transport is over-priced.
I prefer to use my car rather than public transport.
If I could be guaranteed a seat I would use public transport more often.
Public transport is a public good.
There should be more money spent on public transport.
Public transport is unsafe.

Now read our feedback.

Feedback

Public transport is important to reduce congestion: This would make a good statement, tapping the underlying attitude of the respondent to public transport. It is possible to strongly agree or disagree with this statement.

I would be more likely to use public transport if it was cheaper: This might be a good statement but it measures use of public transport rather than underlying attitudes to it. Although many people would agree with this statement in principle, how many would actually use it even if it was cheaper?

Free transport to people's homes from railway stations should be provided late at night: This is an idea rather than an attitude. It is one of many ways that people might be encouraged to use public transport. If the idea is to find out support for a specific idea, this might work.

Public transport increases our sense of community: What is 'our sense of community'? This is overly ambiguous.

Public transport is over-priced: The statement is to the point, but it is not clear that it's measuring attitudes to public transport per se. But it could work.

I prefer to use my car rather than public transport: The problem with this statement is that it is rather too generalised. The response could change depending on the purpose of the trip (e.g. preferences vary for work, commuting and leisure trips). It could work if it was more specific.

If I could be guaranteed a seat I would use public transport more often: This might work, because it is one reason why people do not like public transport.

Public transport is a public good: This is not a good statement because it's a statement of the obvious. It is also not clear what is meant by 'a public good'.

There should be more money spent on public transport: This is quite a good statement. However, most people could agree that more money should be spent - particularly when there is no suggestion that they personally will have to pay more.

Public transport is unsafe: It's not clear here what 'unsafe' means. It could refer to the accident record of public transport, which could be either accident risk to passengers or to other road users. Alternatively, people could interpret it as relating to personal safety.