Attitudes toward the Negro Scales

Name: Attitudes toward the Negro Scales
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Author: Mohammed looti

Mohammed looti

Attitudes toward the Negro Scales

By Mohammed looti / October 28, 2025

Table of Contents

Abstract

The Attitudes toward the Negro Scales (ATNS), developed by Lessing A. Kahn in 1951, are a historical psychological instrument designed to quantify the attitudes of White individuals toward African Americans during the mid-20th century in the United States. The initial development of the scale was part of a broader study investigating the influence of formal education on racial attitudes.

The scale construction employed a rigorous methodology, combining the Thurstone-Chave technique for item selection and the Likert technique for response scaling. The final instrument consists of three distinct scales, each containing 12 items, totaling 36 core items which address six primary domains of interaction and belief concerning Black individuals: personality, education, employment, civil rights, social relations, and housing. The scales demonstrated high internal reliability for their time and context.

Keywords

Racial attitudes, Stereotypes, Segregation, Social psychology, Attitude measurement, Lessing A. Kahn, 1950s psychology, Thurstone scale, Likert scale, Race relations.

Authors

Lessing A. Kahn

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitudes toward the Negro Scales (ATNS) was to provide a systematic, quantitative assessment of racial attitudes held by White individuals concerning African Americans in the post-World War II era. The scale was specifically created to support an academic investigation into how different levels of formal education correlated with the organization and strength of these attitudes.

By focusing on six distinct domains—ranging from perceptions of personality traits to specific policy issues like civil rights and housing access—the scale aimed to capture the multidimensional nature of racial prejudice prevalent in the 1950s. The instrument served as a crucial tool for early social psychological research into race relations and prejudice in the context of rising civil rights tensions.

Construct

The ATNS measures the psychological construct of racial attitudes, specifically focusing on the valence (positive or negative) and intensity of beliefs held by White respondents toward African Americans. This construct is operationalized across six interconnected sub-dimensions, suggesting that attitudes are not monolithic but organized around specific areas of social interaction and policy:

Personality: Generalized beliefs about the inherent traits and character of African Americans.
Education: Attitudes toward equal access to and segregation within educational institutions.
Employment: Views on job equity, hiring practices, and occupational limitations.
Civil Rights: Beliefs regarding political participation and fundamental rights, such as voting.
Social Relations: Acceptance of social mixing, including inter-racial activities and friendships.
Housing: Attitudes regarding residential segregation and public housing access.

Validity

While the original source content does not explicitly detail various forms of validity (such as construct, criterion, or content validity) beyond general claims of validity, the rigorous methodology employed during development suggests a strong emphasis on content and face validity for the era. The initial item pool consisted of 140 statements, constructed or borrowed from existing literature, ensuring comprehensive coverage of the six identified areas relevant to attitudes toward Black individuals at the time.

The use of the Thurstone-Chave technique involved judicial scaling to ensure that selected items accurately represented varying degrees of attitude strength before the final Likert technique was applied. This dual approach to item selection suggests an effort to maximize the scale’s ability to accurately reflect the spectrum of opinions.

Reliability

The original research noted that the Attitudes toward the Negro Scales demonstrated high reliability. This finding is particularly significant given the relatively short length of the final scales—three scales comprising only 12 items each (36 items total). High reliability indicates strong internal consistency, meaning that the items within each 12-item scale were measuring the same underlying attitude dimension consistently.

The reported reliability provides confidence that, within the context of the 1950s and the sample of advanced college students used, the instrument consistently measured the intended construct of racial attitudes without excessive random error.

Factor Analysis

The structure of the final instrument suggests an underlying factor model, although the source material refers to the outcome as three distinct scales derived from item analysis, rather than a formal factor analysis technique (like Exploratory or Confirmatory Factor Analysis). The initial 140 items were reduced and then classified into six main theoretical areas: personality, education, employment, civil rights, social relations, and housing.

The final item analysis resulted in three separate scales, each containing 12 items. These three scales collectively cover all six theoretical areas of focus. This indicates that Kahn likely identified three primary latent factors or dimensions of attitude organization that were being measured by the items, though the precise naming of these three final factors is not detailed in the provided abstract.

Instrument

Test Type: Attitude Scale / Self-Report Questionnaire

Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire using a Likert-type response format.

Language Available: English (Original research context was the US).

Population Group: Non-African American (specifically White) college students, assessed on their attitudes toward African Americans.

Age Group: Adult (Advanced college students).

Population Details: Administered to a sample of advanced college students, likely reflecting an educated, young adult demographic in the early 1950s.

Test Methodology: Items are rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Response categories include “Strongly Agree,” “Agree,” “Undecided,” “Disagree,” and “Strongly Disagree.” The initial development involved the Thurstone-Chave technique for item refinement, followed by the Likert method for final scoring.

Keywords

Lessing Kahn, Prejudice assessment, Race psychology, Attitude organization, Social distance, 1951, Psychological Monographs, American prejudice, Racial bias.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not applicable/Unknown (Historical publication)

Affiliation Email addresses: Not applicable/Unknown (Historical publication)

Correspondence Address: Not applicable/Unknown (Historical publication)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1951

Permissions/Fee: The scale was published in an academic monograph and is historical. Current usage would require consulting the American Psychological Association (APA) or institutional archives for permissions, though the scale is primarily used for historical research and academic citation today, given the outdated terminology and context.

Reference’s

Kahn, Lessing A. (1951). The organization of attitudes toward the Negro as a function of education. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, Vol 65(13), i-39. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0093637

Items of the Attitudes toward the Negro Scales

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The following pages contain a number of statements about which there is no general agreement. People diﬀer in the way they feel about these statements, and there are no right or wrong answers. You can help us by answering each item of this quesbonnaire honestly and thoughcully.

Before going on to answer the quesbonnaire, you will ﬁnd a list of quesbons about yourself on the next page which we would like you to answer. It is necessary that you ﬁll in this part since it will give us many important facts. Also, it is very important that you do not skip any quesbons since that means we cannot use your quesbonnaire. SINCE YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS IS NOT ASKED FOR, BE AS STRAIGHTFORWARD AND AS HONEST ABOUT YOUR ANSWERS AS YOU CAN.

We also want to assure you that your answers will be kept strictly conﬁdenbal. Anything that you state here will in no way be used by either your employer or any other organizabon of which you are a member. To insure this, we have provided this folder with a glued ﬂap which we want you to use to seal the quesbonnaire ajer you have ﬁlled it out. MOREOVER, WE DO NOT WANT YOU TO SIGN YOUR NAME TO ANY PART OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

In what country were you born? □ United States; □ Other (where)
What sex are you? □ Male; □Female
To what race do you belong? □ White; □ Negro; □ Other (what)
What religion do you consider yourself? □ Protestant; □ Roman Catholic; □ Jewish; □ None; □

Other (what)

How old are you now?
Are you married? □ Yes; □ No
Are you going to school now? □ Yes; □ No
Are you working now? □ Yes; □ No
What kind of work do you usually do? (State the kind of job or occupabon, for example, physician, teacher, owner of a grocery store, store salesman, stenographer, bookkeeper, clerk, plumber, riveter, helper, etc.)

About how much money would you say you are now making each month? $
(a) Please draw a circle around the highest grade you completed in school:

Grammar School: None 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 High School: 1 2 3 4

College: 1 2 3 4

If, in addibon, you have gone to any other school, check the appropriate kind of school and indicate the number of years you went.
- Business College
- Trade School
- Professional (e.g., Medical, Law, Graduate, )
- Teachers College
- Nurses Training

In what ward of the city or part of the Philadelphia area do you live? (If you do not know your ward, state the secbon of the city.)

People diﬀer in the degree to which they have lived with, worked with, played with, or in general, have had contact with the members of diﬀerent groups of people. How much experience would you say you have had with the following groups?

DIRECTIONS

READ EACH STATEMENT AND AFTER CAREFUL THOUGHT MARK THE ONE ANSWER WHICH BEST EXPRESSES

YOUR FEELING ABOUT THE STATEMENT. Whenever possible, let your own personal experience determine your answer. You may spend as much bme as you want to answer the statements. If you are in doubt about any of the statements, choose the one answer which seems to most nearly express your present feeling about the statement. MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE ANSWERED ALL THE STATEMENTS FOR IT IS IMPORTANT TO THE SUCCESS OF THIS STUDY THAT THE QUESTIONNAIRE BE COMPLETE.*

AGAIN, WE ASK FOR YOUR HONEST COOPERATION. PLEASE BE FRANK ABOUT YOUR ANSWERS.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE WAR; IT’S PART OF HUMAN