A quasi experimental study to see the relationship between age and attitudes towards women .
This experiment looks at the differences in attitudes scores between two different age groups. It found the older age group had less liberal attitude scores towards females compared with the younger group. There could be many different reasons or this finding, but the most obvious reason is due to the age.
Introduction:.
In 1972 Spence and Helmreich produced a fifty-five-item likert scale surrounding the issues of attitudes towards women. It was known as the AWS. It consists of statements concerning the roles and behaviours of women in many different areas. Each item has a traditional or liberal response. Spence and Helmreich collected data from 241 female and 286 male American psychology students, to produce a shortened version of the AWS. Items were selected for the short version by dividing the participants into quartiles on the basis of their total AWS scores for each sex separately. Twenty-five items which discriminated between the subjects for each quartile and which also had the highest biserial correlation were selected for the short version.
The same patterns of findings emerged for each form of the scale, female students were significantly more liberal than male students, mothers were more liberal than fathers and students were more liberal than parents.
There is a high correlation between the long and short form, but it was announced that the short form is a valid and reliable instrument to measure attitudes to the rights and roles of women in society.
A problem with the short AWS does arise with groups such as British samples and people with a disadvantaged educational background. Its items like "Under modern economic conditions with women being active outside the home men should share in household tasks such as washing dishes and doing the laundry" that seem to cause some confusion to particular groups, and therefore a British version was developed.
