Developing a Scale to Measure Attitude on Gender Difference

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue II, February 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Developing a Scale to Measure Attitude on Gender Difference

Md Nurul Islam
Centre for Higher Studies and Research, Bangladesh University of Professionals, Bangladesh

Abstract: Attitude is an important factor of human life. Measurement of attitude is also important to know human inner psyche. Considering importance, this is an approach to measure attitude on gender difference over some aspects of leadership like decision making, group work, communicating and self-understanding. The aim is to understand human preferences on gender issues in relation to those aspects. This study developed through data collection on some adult educated sample of Bangladesh. Both validity and reliability has been obtained using statistical analysis following scale construction procedure. The reliability coefficient was found 0.72 and the validity was found significant.

Keywords: attitude, gender difference, leadership, scale construction, validity, reliability

I. INTRODUCTION

Attitude is a psycho-social phenomenon. It is quite complex but acquired or learnt. It is the predisposed state of mind of an individual. It is comparatively stable in nature. Attitude of an individual can be understood through one’s expression or overt behaviour. It varies person to person. An individual might have attitude on another person, thing, place or event. It can be changed but this change is comparatively very slow in nature. Understanding attitude of an individual is a requirement to know his/her choices, preferences or liking/disliking. If we understand somebody’s attitude, then we can interact with him/her more constructively and dealings might be more proper and conducive.
On the other hand, gender is a socially constructed term. Sex is physiological and gender is culturally based. That means gender difference is culture bound. Culture makes men and women differed in many ways including attitudes. Cultural treatments and notions on men and women create many barriers for the progress of humankind. To some extent, development of leadership can also be hampered due to biased attitude on gender. We know leadership is not a single factor. It can be defined in many ways. “Leadership is the projection of personality; it is the combination of persuasion and compulsion as well as example that make other people do what you want them to do” (Slim, 1961).

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