*Author was a Psychologist III with Rural Clinics Community Counseling Center in Ely, Nevada at the time of this study. The Community Counseling Center was part of the State of Nevada Rural Clinics system.
Abstract The SAWVAC (Scale to Assess World Views Across Cultures) (Ibrahim, 1984) was administered to 11 Ss for the purpose of assessing test re-test reliability. The Group Mean Correlation was significant and significant pre-post positive correlations were found for 10 of 11 Ss. Results support test re-test reliability over time (one month). T-tests revealed no pre-post or male-female differences. The SAWVAC has potential as an instrument to assess belief systems within and between cultures. As a research instrument, it could be useful in understanding rural and urban cultures and the impact of space flight and space exploration, for example, on human behavior and man's world view across cultures. It also has potential as an instrument to assess a client's world view, beliefs, values and philosophical assumptions in a therapeutic environment. Applications need to be assessed through future studies using larger and broader samples. The scale presents heuristic possibilities.
Ibrahim and Kahn (1984) have developed an instrument (Scale to Assess World Views Across Cultures - SAWVAC) to assist counselors and counseling psychologists in understanding clients' perceptions and apprehensions of their world. The SAWVAC (Ibrahim, 1984) was designed to provide information regarding beliefs, values and assumptions on five existential categories. Kluckhohn (1951, 1956) previously developed these categories to study value orientations and value emphasis across cultures. The five categories used in the SAWVAC are Human Nature (good, evil or combination; Human Relationships (lineal-hierarchical, collateral or mutual, or individualistic); People's Relationship to or Perception of Nature (controlled by nature, mutual co-existence or subjugation of nature); Time (a past, present or future orientation); and Activity (being, being in becoming, or doing orientation). Ibrahim (1984) suggests that the SAWVAC will be useful in assisting in understanding a client's world view, beliefs, values and philosophical assumptions as well as aiding in developing appropriate process and goals in counseling and therapy.
Description:
The SAWVAC consists of 45 questions assessing each of the five categories originally developed by Kluckhohn (1951, 1956). A five point scale ranging from "not at all true of myself" to "true of myself" is used to rate each item.
Purpose:
The SAWVAC was used in a reliability study on a rural sample in eastern Nevada. The purpose of this study was to assess the test re-test reliability of the SAWVAC.
Subjects:
The SAWVAC was administered twice to 11 subjects with one month elapsing between administrations. Subjects included 7 students who were members of a 1 credit continuing education class for teachers on cross-cultural understanding. An additional four subjects were staff members of a mental health center. All subjects came from a rural town in eastern Nevada with a population of approximately 8000. It is the largest of three towns in a county of approximately 10,000 square miles.
The demographic distribution of the subjects is listed in Table 1. It is not a representative cross-section of this area of Nevada as it includes only teachers and mental health staff members. However, for the purpose of assessing the test re-test reliability of the SAWVAC, it is useful.
Method:
Subjects were asked to volunteer to take the SAWVAC two times, the second time being one month after the first. The teachers were given the first administration in a group setting. The second administration was done by mail. The mental health staff were asked to complete the first administration in a group setting. The second administration was accomplished through intra-office mail.
All subjects were instructed to follow the instructions on the SAWVAC and were told they were participating in a reliability study.
Results:
Table 2 lists the Mean Raw Scores pre and post for all subjects. A T-test performed on the Group Means revealed no significant difference between the pre- and post- administrations (p= .05).
T-tests were performed on male pre-post, female pre-post, male-female pre, and male- female post Group Means. None of these comparisons were significant (p= .05). These are listed in Table 3.
Correlations were calculated between pre- and post- scores for all subjects. These are listed in Table 4. T-tests were performed on all correlations individually and as a group. Significant positive correlations were revealed for 10 of 11 subjects (p= .05). The Mean Correlation for the group was also significant (p= .05).
Discussion:
The lack of any significant differences in scores over time (one month) supports the test re-test reliability of the SAWVAC with this group of subjects. It also suggests that there are no significant differences between males and females in this group concerning beliefs as sampled by the SAWVAC.
The results support the reliability of the SAWVAC as an instrument which samples basic beliefs of individuals. As this was a relatively small sample, future studies should sample larger groups from a broad variety of cultural settings to establish reliability across and within cultures.
Conclusions:
The SAWVAC has potential as an instrument to assess belief systems within and between cultures. As a research instrument, it could be useful in understanding rural and urban cultures. Another research application would be to study the impact of space flight and space exploration on human behavior and man's world view across cultures. It also has potential as a clinical instrument to assess a patient's belief system in a therapeutic environment. These and other possible applications need to be assessed through future studies. The SAWVAC does present definite heuristic possibilities.
REFERENCES Ibrahim, F.A. A pilot study of a Scale to Assess World Views Across Cultures. Invited paper presented at the Second Winter Round Table on Cross-cultural Counseling "Emerging Issues in Cross-cultural Counseling". Teachers College, Columbia, New York, 1984.
Ibrahim, F.A. Cross-cultural counseling and psychotherapy: A scale to assess world view. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling. 1984.
Ibrahim, F.A. and Kahn, H. Scale to assess world views across cultures (SAWVAC). Unpublished manuscript, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 1984.
Kluckhohn, C. Toward a comparison of value-emphases in different cultures. In White, L. (Ed.) The state of social sciences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956.
Kluckhohn, C. Values and value orientation in the theory of action. In Parsons, T. and Shields, E.A. (Eds.) Toward a general theory of action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951.
Statistical References Kirk, Roger E. Experimental design procedures for the behavioral sciences. Belmont: Brooks/Cole, 1968.
Roscoe, John T. Fundamental research statistics for the behavioral sciences. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. (Second Edition), 1975.
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