MEASURING THE ATTITUDES OF LIBRARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TOWARD INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM, INNOVATION AND CHANGE, SERVICE, RESEARCH AND ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
MEASURING THE ATTITUDES OF LIBRARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TOWARD INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM, INNOVATION AND CHANGE, SERVICE, RESEARCH AND ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
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Date
1973-05
Authors
FINKS, LEE WALTON
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Abstract
Measuring the Attitudes of Library School Students
toward I n t e l l e c t u a l Freedom, Innovation and Change,
Service, Research and Administration and Management
by LEE WALTON FINKS, Ph.D.
Thesis d i r e c t o r : Professor Ralph Blasingame
As attempts are increasingly made to measure the
|various aspects of American l i b r a r y science, the need
for psychological measures, such as a t t i t u d e s c a l e s,
becomes more evident. This research has attempted to
develop an instrument which can serve as a valid and
r e l i a b l e measure of l i b r a r i a n s ' and l i b r a r y students'
a t t i t u d e s toward five issues on which American l i b r a r i es
a r e c r i t i c i z e d : i n t e l l e c t u a l freedom, innovation and
change, service, research, and administration and management.
The instrument is a set of five Likert-type a t t i t u de
s c a l e s , one for each of the a t t i t u d e objects. The scales
a r e made up of twenty (for three s c a l e s ) or twenty-five
( f o r two scales) statements of opinion with which the
subject is asked to agree or disagree on a seven-step
s c a l e . These statements of opinion (items) were randomly
arranged and combined with t h i r t e e n i r r e l e v a nt
items to form a 123-item instrument, plus a covereheet
containing directions and a brief demographic questionnaire.
The reliability and validity of the scales were established
to the investigator's satisfaction. For reliability,
three standard techniques, coefficient alpha, splithalf,
and test-retest, were used, and with all three, each
scale demonstrated reliabilities at or above the criterion
level of .8. For validity, each of the five scales was
subjected to at least four tests of construct validity,
and each scale "passed" at least three of these tests.
In addition none of the scales correlated with a measure
of verbal ability, and only one (by the slimmest of
margins) correlated with a measure of social desirability
response sets.
In addition to the construction of the instrument,
a limited number of assumptions about library education
were examined through testing of hypotheses. These
hypotheses, which relate essentially to the change of
students' attitudes during enrollment in a graduate
library school program, were: (1) that the scores of
students in their first semester of library school will
have more variance than the scores of students in their
second or later semester; (2) that the mean of the second
(later) group will be significantly higher than that of
the first group; and (3) that the mean of the later semester
students' scores will have moved in the direction
of the faculty members' scores.
These hypotheses, designed to test the assumption
that the faculty and curriculum of a library education
program significantly affect the attitudes uf participating
students, were not, in general, tenable. To simplify
the very complex results, we might say that jrtudents'
attitudes did change, but not very much; that they were
not made "firmer" by more exposure to library education;
and that to the extent that they did change, they changed
in the direction of the faculty who had beex teaching them.
The results also showed that for this sample of students,
attitudes toward the five issues studied were not
strongly favorable.
Description
A thesis submitted to
The Graduate School
of
Rutgers University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Keywords
MEASURING THE ATTITUDES,, LIBRARY SCHOOL STUDENTS,, TOWARD INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM,,, INNOVATION AND CHANGE, SERVICE, RESEARCH,, ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT