Construction and validation of a cross-national scale of family modernism.

Abstract

As one phase of its research on the social psychology of modernization the Project on Social and Cultural Aspects of Development undertook to construct and validate a cross-nationally applicable scale of family attitudes and behaviors measured on a traditional I modern dimension. The data consisted of 5$00 interviews with male workers in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), India, Israel, Nigeria, Argentina, and Chile. The main sample groups were drawn from among rural cultivators, urban nonindustrial workers, and factory workers, with a range within and across these sample groups of other socially relevant variables. Realms of family life included in the study were the role of the aged, aspirations for children, independence from parents, extended kin obligations, women''s rights, and family planning. Several family modernism scales incorporating these themes were constructed emphasizing several different criteria: theoretical relevance, maximum internal consistency (as measured by the Kuder-Richardson formula), and strict cross-national comparability. Al though we were able to construct scales fully meeting the first and third criteria, all of our scales attained only modest reliability. This result led us to the tentative conclusion, subject to further research, that the realm of family relations is much less internally consistent within and across cultures than other realms involved in modernization. Even given their modest internal consistency, however, our scales were validated in that they consistently correlated significantly and above. 10 with education, occupation, factory experience, urban-rural origin, and mass media exposure.