The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Changes - Research Paper Example

TOPIC: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDE CHANGES Research Problem The sociology of attitude is a very important phenomenon in any human endeavor, especially in situations where there is the involvement of more than one person. This is because the attitude of any of such people present could determine how information will be processed, how each person will react to environmental and emotional happenings, as well as how each person is going to behave (Carver et al. 2008). Looking at the fact that a typical organization or institution will made up of different people with different backgrounds, it is important that each organization or institution has a sociological orientation that tries to identify the various attitudes of employees, how these attitudes affect job performance and how these attitudes can be changed if necessary. Sadly though, there is a problem where there is often disregard for this need. Organizational leaders tend to be more focused on the economic pursuant of success to the neglect of such basic sociological principles to attaining success. It is against this background that the proposed study will be undertaken to equip institutional and organizational leaders with the needed ideas on the relevance of the application of attitude and attitude changes in their institutions and organizations. The place of the study in previous research The present study is not the first in the area of attitude and attitude changes. There have indeed been a number of researchers conducted in this area and the impact of these research works on academic and professional practice has been tremendous. In a recent research for example, Gregory and Haddock (2009), undertook a study on the topic “The psychology of attitude and attitude change” and came out with several conclusions are the useful for academic reference as well as the present study. It is for example based on the idea developed in their research that attitude leads to behavior and behavior leads to values that the problem of the present study has been related to how attitude could brings about personal coherence in an organization to ensure that the needed values are exhibited by each employee to ensure growth and development. Petty and Wegener (1997) also conducted a similar research on “Attitude and Attitude Change”, which was also significant for institutional application as their work concluded that the reason some global companies have achieved tremendous success and others have failed is that some companies understand and apply the psychological aspects of attitude and attitude change in their corporate leadership whiles others ignore this. Research Questions The data collection exercise, particularly secondary data collection will be guided by the following research questions, which shall serve as delimitation on the scope of knowledge that needs to be researched as part of the study and those that may not be relevant for the current study. These questions are posed as follows: 1. What are the different forms of attitudes commonly exhibited by employees in typical organizations? 2. In what ways does the psychology of attitude affect job performance? 3. What forms of attitudes may be termed as unwholesome for organizational coherence? 4. What are the principles involved in attitude change? Significance of the Study The conduct of the proposed study comes in at a well determined moment when several organizations are seeking rapid growth after the global economy came out of a recession not too long ago. For most of these institutions, there is a common understanding that the need to develop competitive advantage is the only way out to seeing them survive in a harsh global competition. But having exhausted most of the traditional forms of competitive advantage such as the use of the marketing mix (Kailash, 2008), it is just the right time to try something unorthodox in the use of organizational attitude reconstruction. If organizations will through this research understand the psychology of attitude and attitude change and rightly apply the theories of the concept to ensure change, the study is going to be of practical significance in defining a new line of competitive advantage. Academically, this study is going to be added to existing literature on attitude and attitude change with new dimensions of findings and results that are going to serve as useful reference materials for further academic practice. Hypothesis People’s behavior is guided by attitudes specific to that behavior. Independent variable Behavior put on by people Dependent variable Attitudes specific to given behavior Concepts with the topic There shall be four major concepts or dimensions of the research topic. These are the concept of attitude, dimensions of attitude, Influence of attitude on behavior and attitude change. These four compositions shall be analysed into a common parameter whereby their fusion is expected to bring about organizational growth and development from a psychological attitudinal adjustment dimension. Writing on the concept of attitude, Taylor and Francis Group (2012) explained that “an attitude is a reaction to an idea, event, or object that can range from a subtle (unconscious) evaluative reaction, to a more direct expression in words or deeds.” This brings out the realization that attitude could actually be taken from a number of informed dimensions. These dimensions make attitude a measurable concept and are given in three scopes namely attitude strength, attitude accessibility and attitude ambivalence (Chris, 2005). On his part, Perloff (2008) posits that for organizations to achieve growth and development emanating from the attitudes of people, it is important that the attitudes put up by the people within the organization influence their behavior. With the notion that attitude can actually influence behavior other psychologists have outlined the possibility of changing attitudes to bring about positive influence on behavior within an organization. It is indeed said that it is only when such form of positive influence is attained that there can be a corresponding positive influence on the growth and development of an organization (Baker, 2000). Research design The proposed study is going to be conducted following the qualitative research method. This is because the key concepts of attitude and attitude change being dealt with by the researcher are psychological concepts that are immeasurable. To this end, qualitative research method, which does not make use of quantification of variables, becomes the best option for the researcher (Project Management Institute, 2009). As far as qualitative research is concerned, the research design is going to be narrowed to the use of focus group study whereby the researcher is going to identify a specific group of persons who are directly affected by the psychological issues being raised in the study. After the focus group has been identified, the researcher is going to develop a sample size within the group from whom data are going to be collected in reference to the research questions and the aims of the study. The rationale for the selection of a focus group is avoiding the use of a very large sample size, which will make this academic research, which is time bound difficult to handle. Indeed, it is important that the researcher collects a handful of data that can well be interpreted, discussed and analyzed to draw a logical conclusion than dealing with a very large data size that will make analysis haphazard and unreliable (Perloff, 2008). Population and Sample The population of the study generally refers to all people within the setting of the researcher, of whom there is a possibility of collecting data from (Baker, 2000). These are going to be made up of staff and workers of an identified sociology department of a university. The rationale behind this very setting is that it will present the researcher with the opportunity of interacting with people who have high academic and professional knowledge on the issue of psychology of attitude and attitude change. It is expected that the sample size will be made up of a number not less than one hundred (100). To this end, the researcher shall construct a sample size to serve as the focus group. The sample size shall be made up of twenty (20) respondents. Of the twenty (20) respondents, there are going to be management workers as well as ordinary staff workers who are going to contribute their knowledge to the influence of attitude on organizational management and how attitude change can lead to job performance. Sampling Technique Sampling technique is highly relevant for the current study due to the need to have a sample size out of the larger population. The sampling technique to be used by the researcher shall be the random sampling technique. Generally, random sampling is the kind of sampling technique in which every member of the population has an equal chance of becoming part of the sample size. This means that the selection is done in a way that there is no preconceived or predetermined notion of who will be part of the sample size and who will not be part (Chris, 2005). The researcher shall however have two separate forms of random sampling whereby one will be undertaken for management workers and the other for the remaining staff. In both instances, a fish bowl method will be used whereby the inscription ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ shall be written on pieces of papers. Five (5) people from the management who shall pick the only five inscriptions with ‘YES’ from their bowl shall be included in their sample size while the fifteen (15) people from the staff who will pick the only fifteen inscriptions with ‘YES’ from their group shall be included in the sample size. Research Instrument The research instrument refers to the tool with which the researcher is going to collect data from the sample size (Ezzamel, 2004). It is a very important area of the research as it determines the type of data to be collection, how data are going to be analyzed and level of reliability and validity that will be recorded (Taylor and Francis Group, 2012). Generally, the selection of the present instrument is based on the research design as well as the research method, which are focused group and qualitative research respectively. Based on the characteristics of these methods which allows for subjective data rather than statistical data to be collected, the researcher make use of interview as the research instrument. An interview is a question and answer interaction between two people with one person being the interviewer and the other person being the interviewee. The researcher finds interview appropriate because it is going to enable the researcher construct open ended questions that are based on in-depth reasoning and opinion. The open ended nature of the questions is going to make qualitative data analysis possible and easier as they are going to be subjective and interpretive. Primary Data collection The data collection shall begin right after the interview guide is made ready. The primary data collection shall involve a scheduled face to face interview where the researcher shall collect data grouped under four major themes. Each theme shall be constructed from one of the research questions. Because of the number of people involved, which is twenty (20) and people each interview section may last for about 15 minutes, the researcher shall use a total of four days for the data collection exercise whereby five people will be interviewed on each day. The interview shall be a one-on-one interview and so each day is expected to produce approximately 1 hour 15 minutes of data collection exercise. The need to limit the time involved is that the data collection shall be done during the working hours of the respondents and so it will be important not to disrupt their duties with the data collection exercise. During the interview section, the researcher is going to use a tape recorder to record the proceedings of the interview so that these will be played back after some time to enable data analysis to take effect. Reliability and validity of measurement Reliability and validity represents two different aspects of a research study though commonly used together. Reliability deals with the generalization of findings whiles validity deals with the fairness of the data collection process (Feldman and March, 2011). By reliability, it should be possible to get the same or similar results when all variables of the research are maintained and repeated elsewhere. To ensure this, the researcher is going to undertake a mock data collection process to test the reliability of the research instrument and the instrument items. This shall be done using colleague students. It is hoped that this mock exercise will expose the researcher to areas of the instrument items that cannot stand the credibility of being reliable. As far as validity is concerned, the researcher is going to ensure this through two major avenues. First, the setting to be used is sure to guarantee that relevant and professional results that are in consonance with the research ideas are going to be collected. Secondly, the use of random sampling is expected to improve the validity of the study as the researcher shall not be having any personalized influence over the people who should be part of the sample size and thus what the outcome of the study should be. Data analysis plan As part of the practice of qualitative research, the researcher is going to use qualitative analysis procedure that is devoid of the use of any numeric indexes, charts, figures or graphical representations. This is mainly because the concept of attitude and attitude change, which the researcher is dealing with, is not one that can be quantified. Therefore, the use of any form of quantitative representations is going to be avoided. To this end, there shall be two major aspects of the data analysis procedure. The first shall be the presentation of findings, where the researcher shall spelt out the findings of the research. This shall be done under four themes, taken directly from the research questions. The second aspect shall be the interpretation of data. This shall be done from a subjective view point but shall be backed with existing related and relevant literature. The reason for the introduction of such secondary data approach in the data analysis is to ensure that the privilege of the researcher in having a subjective analysis will not be overshadowed with the need of ensuring that the interpretations made are valid, evidence-based and empirical (Ferreira and Otley, 2003). Ethical considerations As an academic exercise, it is very important that the researcher observes high standards and levels of ethical considerations. To this end, the researcher shall ensure that specific aspects and components of the study are conducted with strict adherence to ethical standards given by the international research association as well as those spelt out by the awarding institution. Most of these shall however have to do with the interaction between the researcher and the sample size. As but of the ethical considerations, the researcher shall ensure that a permission letter is written to the identified institution to be used in the study. As part of the person, a consent letter shall be sent, explaining the rationale for the study, role of participants, as well as risks associated with participation, if any. Once the sample size has been developed, the researcher shall ensure that the identities of respondents are kept anonymous and responses from them are confidential. Moreover, in the use of secondary data, the researcher shall ensure that plagiarism roles are not breached by correctly referencing all sources that shall be used in the study. REFERENCE LIST Baker J. (2000) Marketing Theory a student text, CENGAGE learning, South- Western Carver et al. (2008). Managerial Complexity in Project- Based Operations: A Grounded Model and Its Implications for Practice. Project Management Journal, Volume 39, 34- 53 Chris F (2005) Marketing communications engagement, strategies and practice.Fourth Edition Ezzamel M. (2004). Organizational Change and Accounting: Understanding the Budgeting System in its Organizational Context. Organization Studies (Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG.) 15(2): 213-240 Feldman M S, March J G. (2011). Information in Organizations as Signal and Symbol. 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Taylor and Francis Group (2012) Social Psychology: Attitudes and Attitude Change. Accessed February 6, 2013 from http://psypress.co.uk/smithandmackie/resources/chapter.asp?ch=07 Read More