Assessing causal dimensions

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to evaluate a new measuring instrument, the Causal Dimension Scale (CDS). Eighty-nine New Zealand university students were asked to state in their own words the cause(s) of their previous year's tertiary grades and then to complete the CDS which sought their perceptions of the underlying cause(s) in terms of Weiner's (1979) dimensions: namely, locus of causality, stability, and controllability. It was found that the internal consistency coefficient o found for the control scale was rather low but the factor structure obtained generally supported the validity of the CDS. Fourteen “judges” were in fairly close agreement both with each other and with the subjects as to the placement of the first 32 subjects' causes on two of Weiner's three dimensions. It was concluded that while there is a need for an instrument such as the CDS, it does not seem to be wholly satisfactory at the moment.