hus, it was hypothesised that people who obtained a low score on the scale being developed would have previously stated that they were in support of the fuel protests. Conversely, those who obtained a high score would have previously rated themselves as against the recent fuel protests. Method - Time OneParticipantsQuota sampling was employed to select 50 subjects who would participate in this study. 25 of the participants rated themselves as in support of the fuel protests and the remainder rated themselves as against the protests. The participants were preselected in terms of their attitudes towards the protests in order to facilitate later scale analysis of criterion related validity. Of these 50, 23 were male and 27 were female; all were Level 2 Undergraduates from the University of Leeds. Their ages ranged from 18 to 28 years.MaterialsThe participants in this sample were presented with a Likert scale measuring their attitudes towards the recent fuel protests (see App 1). The Likert scale contained 40 items, which were generated at random by the experimenter group, 20 of the items generated were worded favourably while 20 were worded unfavourably. The scale consisted of a variety of items, either of a cognitive, affective and behavioural aspect of the attitude. The items included were drawn from all areas of the content domain. Each of the items had 5 possible responses ranging from Strongly Agree through to Strongly Disagree, the response strongly agree obtained a score of 1 whereas strongly disagree obtained a score of 5. (see App. 1)DesignA cross sectional design was used in this experiment. There were two experimental groups; one, which contained those in favour of the fuel protests, and group two, which contained those in opposition to the fuel protests. 50 percent of the scale items were reversed so to indicate support for the protests, the respondent would have to disagree with the statement. This was employed to lower the i...
