A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF THE SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL.
Abstract
The large literature on Osgood's Semantic Differential (S) (Osgood, C. E., G. J. Suci and P. H. Tannenbauna. 'The measurement of meaning.' Urbana, Univ. Illinois press, 1957) suggests that for adults there are three major dimensions in the domain of effective meaning--evaluation, potency, and activity. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the changes in the dimensions of affective meaning as a function of age. A second purpose was to obtain test-retest reliabilities of the SD for children. The typical SD study involves having subjects rate a number of concepts (e.g., Mother) on a series of bipolar adjective scales (e.g., good-bad). In the present study, the same 20 concepts (and two repeats) were rated on the same 28, 11-point adjective scales by 96, 110, 107, and 100 parochial school children in grades three, four, six, and in high school. Both the adjectives and concepts were high frequency words. It was concluded that the primary dimensions of affective meaning for children as yound as grade three children were very similar to those for adults.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1965
- Accession Number
- AD0625403
Entities
People
- Roy S. Lilly
Organizations
- Princeton University