4.5 Attitudes & Expectations

This section examines the data that are available on attitudes and expectations for the NLSY79 cohort.  Attitude questions within the NLSY79 surveys measure an individual’s outlook or demeanor in a given survey year.  Expectations questions measure an individual’s perceptions of the future

Attitudes

One of the major sets of attitude questions in the NLSY79 relates to respondents’ assessments of women working.  While a variety of surveys have examined women’s roles over time, the NLSY79 is unique because it tracks how an individual’s view of women’s roles changes, enabling researchers to understand how attitudes toward women’s activity in the labor force evolve over the life cycle.

Table 4.5.1 Percent of NLSY79 Respondents Who Either Agree or Strongly Agree with Statement (Unweighted Data)

For researchers who are interested in tracking these issues across generations, the NLS has included similar attitudinal measures in surveys of other cohorts.  The NLSY79 Young Adults were asked these questions in 2002.  Mature Women were asked about their attitudes toward working roles in 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987, while Young Women were surveyed in 1972, 1978, 1983, and 1988.  This set of additional questions enables researchers to not only track changes over time within a cohort but also to understand how attitudes toward work change between cohorts for individuals in a similar age range.

Another set of attitude questions, fielded in 1979, examines how in-school respondents feel about their education.  These questions (R00159.–R00168.) ask students to state their attitudes on issues such as how satisfied they are with their school and how safe they feel in school.  Overall, the unweighted data show that most students expressed a positive attitude toward their school and schooling.

Self-Perceptions: In selected survey years, the NLSY79 has collected information from respondents on their perceived self-esteem, their feelings of control over their own lives, their sociability, and their perceptions of influential people in their lives.

Rotter Locus of Control Scale

The Rotter Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (R01530.–R01537.), collected as part of the 1979 NLSY79 survey, is a four-item abbreviated version of a 23-item forced choice questionnaire adapted from the 60-item Rotter Adult I-E scale developed by Rotter (1966).  The scale was designed to measure the extent to which individuals believe they have control over their lives through self-motivation or self-determination (internal control) as opposed to the extent that the environment (i.e., chance, fate, luck) controls their lives (external control).  The scale is scored in the external direction¾the higher the score, the more external the individual.  In order to score the Rotter scale in the NLSY79, one has to generate a four-point scale for each of the paired items and then sum the scores.  For example, the first pair has the following two statements:

1. What happens to me is my own doing. (internal control item)

2. Sometimes I feel that I don't have enough control over the direction my life is taking. (external control item)

Respondents were asked to select one of each of the paired statements and decide if the selected statement was much closer or slightly closer to their opinion of themselves. The following shows how the scale is constructed:

Each of the four paired items is constructed in the same manner as the above example.  The values for each item are then summed.  The maximum possible score is 16, indicating high external control, while the minimum possible score is four, indicating high internal control.  The summed score on the NLSY79 abbreviated version correlates well with self-esteem, education, and social class, but the internal consistency of the scale is quite low for the whole cohort (alpha: .36).  Separate estimates by race and sex do not yield significantly higher reliability estimates.

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was administered during the 1980 (R03035.–R03044.) and 1987 (R23491.–R23500.) interviews.  This 10-item scale, designed for adolescents and adults, measures the self-evaluation that an individual makes and customarily maintains.  It describes a degree of approval or disapproval toward oneself (Rosenberg, 1965).  The scale is short, widely used, and has accumulated evidence of validity and reliability.  It contains 10 statements of self-approval and disapproval with which respondents are asked to strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree.  Items A, B, D, F, and G need to be reversed prior to scoring in order for a higher score to designate higher self-esteem.  Users should consult the relevant survey year questionnaire for specific wording.  Typically, the raw items are summed or the standardized items are averaged to create a summary score.  The scale has proven highly internally consistent, with reliability coefficients that range from .87 (Menaghan, 1990) to .94 (Stroccia-Rivera, 1988), depending on the nature of the NLSY79 sample selected.

Influence of Significant Others

The “On Significant Other” section of the 1979 NLSY79 questionnaire is the source of the discrete set of nine variables (R01491.–R01499.) dealing with the attitude of the most influential person in each respondent’s life toward certain key career, occupational, residence, and childbearing decisions.  These variables are available for respondents who were between the ages of 14 and 17 in 1979.

Sociability

In 1985, two questions were asked of the respondent about the degree to which he or she was shy or outgoing.  The first question (R17743.) inquired about the respondent’s perception of how shy or outgoing they were at age 6 and the second question (R17744.) asked them to consider how shy or outgoing they are as an adult.

Pearlin Mastery Scale

The Pearlin Mastery Scale is a measure of self-concept and references the extent to which individuals perceive themselves in control of forces that significantly impact their lives.  It consists of a 7-item scale developed by Pearlin, et al. (1981).  Each item (R38942.–R38948.) is a statement regarding the respondent’s perception of self, and respondents are asked how strongly they agree or disagree with each statement.  Four response categories are allowed:  (1) strongly disagree; (2) disagree; (3) agree; and (4) strongly agree.  The scale is constructed by adding together the responses from each item; thus, a range of 4 to 16 is possible.  To obtain a positively oriented scale (i.e., a higher score represents the perception of greater mastery over one’s environment), negatively phrased questions (R38942., R38943., R38944., R38946., R38948.) should have their response sets reverse coded.

Health Related Attitudes-Aids Knowledge:

In 1988, a series of questions was administered to ascertain respondents’ familiarity with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).  This information allows researchers to examine the impact of such information on subsequent health-related behaviors.

1. eating in a restaurant where the cook has AIDS?

2. sharing plates, forks, or glasses with someone who has AIDS?

3. using public toilets?

4. sharing needles for drug use with someone who has AIDS?

5. kissing on the cheek a person who has AIDS?

6. being coughed or sneezed on by someone who has AIDS?

7. attending school with a child who has AIDS?

8. mosquitoes or other insects?

9. having sex with a person who has AIDS?

The series concludes with questions on whether an employer ever provided any information about AIDS to the respondent (R27104.) and, for individuals with school-age children, questions on whether the respondent has ever discussed AIDS with any of his or her children (R27106.) and whether the (oldest) child has had instruction at school about AIDS (R27107.).

Expectations

Although the NLSY79 contains a great deal of information about respondents over time, it has only collected a small amount of information on respondents’ perceptions or expectations about the future.  These expectations are important to measure since they provide valuable insight into respondents’ future plans.  Questions were asked in the early years about respondents’ expectations for their educational, occupational, and marital futures.  Military expectation questions were asked each year from 1979–85.  Finally, fertility expectation questions have been asked in most survey years.  Expectation questions that have been included are outlined in Table 4.5.2.

Table 4.5.2 NLSY79 Expectations Questions

Related Information: For measures of job satisfaction, users should consult the topical subsection "Job Satisfaction" in this guide. Additional information related to health can be found in the "Health" section. Items capturing the quality of marital relationships can be found in the "Marital Status, Transitions & Attitudes" section.

Survey Instruments: Interested readers should examine Section 20 in the 1979 questionnaire on “Family Attitudes” and Section 22 on “Aspirations and Expectations” for the majority of attitude and expectations questions collected in that survey year.

The women’s role items were also collected in the 1982 questionnaire (Section 15), the 1987 questionnaire (Section 20), and in the “Income and Assets” section of 2004 questionnaire.  Job aspirations can be found in questionnaire sections 18 (1980), 20 (1981), 17 (1982), 15 (1983), and 16 (1984).  The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale items can be found in Section 14 of the 1980 questionnaire and Section 15 of the 1987 questionnaire.  The health sections of the 1985 (Section 12) and 1992 (Section 11) questionnaires collect the sociability and Pearlin Mastery Scale items, respectively.

Data Files: Most of the variables described in this section can be found in the “Attitude” area of interest.  Fertility expectations are located in the “Children,” “Birth Record,” and “Birth Record xxxx” areas of interest, and military expectations can be found in the “Military” area of interest.  Users can find the sociability measure in the “Health” area of interest.

Comparison to Other NLS Cohorts: The NLSY79 children and young adults have been asked a number of attitude and expectation questions over time. In 2002, the young adults were asked the same family attitude questions as the NLSY79 Main Youth were asked in 1979, 1982, 1987, and 2004.

The NLSY97 Youth Questionnaire collects information about the respondents’ attitudes toward the justice system and toward their parents in each round. The round 1 Youth Questionnaire also asked about respondents’ attitudes toward school and perceptions of their peers and themselves.

References

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Cherlin, A. and Bourque, L.B. “Dimensionality and Reliability of the Rotter I-E Scale.” Sociometry, 37: 565–582, 1974.

Doherty, William and Baldwin, Cynthia. “Shifts and Stability in Locus of Control During the 1970s:  Divergence of the Sexes.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 4: 1048–1053, 1985.

Lefcourt, Herbert M.  Locus of Control:  Current Trends in Theory and Research.  Hillsdale, New Jersey:  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1976.

Menaghan, Elizabeth G. “The Impact of Occupational and Economic Pressures on Young Mothers’ Self-Esteem:  Evidence from the NLSY.” Presented:  Annual Meetings of the Society for the Sociological Study of Social Problems, Washington, D.C., August 9, 1990.

Pearlin, Leonard I.; Lieberman, Morton A.; Menaghan, Elizabeth G.; and Mullan, Joseph T. “The Stress Process.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 22 (December):  337–353, 1981.

Rosenberg, Morris.  Society and the Adolescent Self-Image. Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1965.

Rosenberg, Morris.  Conceiving the Self. NY:  Basic Books, Orig. Ed. 1979.  Melbourne, Florida:  Krieger Publishing Co., Inc., Reprint, 1986.

Rotter, Julian B.  “Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement.”  Psychological Monographs General and Applied, 80 (1, Whole No. 609), 1966.

Rotter, Julian B. “Some Problems and Misconceptions Related to the Construct of Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43: 56–67, 1975.

Strocchia-Rivera, Lenore.  Self-Esteem and Educational Aspirations as Antecedents of Adolescent Unmarried Motherhood.  Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1988.

Watson, Jane M.  “A Note on the Dimensionality of the Rotter Locus of Control Scale.”  Australian Journal of Psychology, 33, 3: 319–330, 1981.

Wylie, Ruth C.  The Self-Concept Volume 2:  Theory and Research on Selected Topics.  Lincoln, Nebraska:  University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Wylie, Ruth C.  The Self-Concept Volume 1:  A Review of Methodological Considerations and Measuring Instruments.  Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1974.