The attribution of open-mindedness : the effects of education and age instructions on responses to the balanced dogmatism scale

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Melbourne, 1976The theoretical and research literature related to . authoritarianism and dogmatism, and their relationship with educational level and age level, was reviewed. A study dealing with the attributions by schoolteachers of open-mindedness to students at different educational levels, and the implications of this study concerning self-fulfilling prophecies in education, was critically reviewed, and some unresolved issues were discussed. Within this contextual framework a study was proposed to investigate one of the issues needing clarification. Differently prefaced Balanced Dogmatism Scales were administered to 57 male and 103 female teachers/ college students, approximately between the ages of 19 and 23 years. The testing took place during late 1974 and early 1975. The main aim of the study was to investigate the hypothesis that the age and education instructions prefacing the Balanced Dogmatism Scale would be confounded in subjects attributions, and would therefore be reducible to one another. This hypothesis was only partly supported by the results. For: the two lower levels of age and education instructions, that is, 12 year old and first-form 'students, and 17 year old and sixth form student, the instructions were confounded. For the two upper levels, that is, 21 year old and university undergraduate, and 19 year old and teachers P. college student, the instructions were found to be independent of one another. Since the confounding occurred only in part, there was an overall lack of interaction between the age and education instructions. Because of the insignificance of this interaction effect, a post-hoc analysis was carried out on the main effects of age and educational level instructions. It was found that increased open-mindedness was attributed both as a function of educational level, and as a function of age level, and that the direction and form of these attributions were similar. Discussion centred on an attempted explanation of the findings in the light of other evidence, and on their implications for further research