THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTITUDES TOWARD CENSORSHIP

To examine characteristics of subjects relative to their attitudes toward censorship, a study surveyed 98 college students selected from students in a public university 4.n the southeastern United States. A 24-item Likert-style cellsorship scale was used to measure attitudes toward censorship. St:ong agreement with affirmative items would suggest that a respondent was pro-censorship; the reverse was true for the negatively directed items. After completing the censorship scale, subjects were tested on the vocabulary subtest of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, a 100-item multiple-choice test designed to yield a raw score indicating vocabulary knowledge. Following the vocabulary measure, subjects were..ested with two separately administered cloze tests. The first cloze test was constructed from a newspaper article strongly opposing censorship, while the second cloze test used an article strongly favoring censorship. Findings suggested that individuals with weake