Graphical Associative Test of Attitudes: Testing Internal Consistency
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2026.4.3182Keywords:
social action theory, social attitudes, internal consistency, direct measurements, indirect measurements, Graphical Associative Test of Attitude, GATAAbstract
The Graphical Associative Attitude Test (GATA) is an example of an indirect measure of social attitude. It has been very actively used to explain and predict social behaviour and has demonstrated the ability to significantly improve the accuracy of predictions. However, the formal validation of this test has not yet been completed. The present study summarises the results of testing the internal consistency of the GATA measures. Firstly, the authors test the degree of consistency of individual results of the same type of test tasks, i.e. verify the existence of the phenomenon of consistency of measurements as such. Secondly, the authors examine the presence and degree of stability of a latent variable that could be interpreted as the subject of measurement — a “construct” predicted by the theory that explains the phenomenon of consistency in the behaviour of empirically measured indicators. The results of the study show that both indirect (GATA) and direct (semantic differential) measures reliably discriminate between the objects of evaluation. Against this background, GATA measures demonstrate a relatively higher internal consistency and form a relatively closer relationship with a latent variable that is definitely irreducible to a similar variable explaining the variation in indicators of direct measures.
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