3.)
degree to which the different criteria of ownership under
consideration applied to the particular recall item.
The third section of the questionnaire was designed to
elicit more formal, explicit judgements of the criteria
under consideration. The instructions were:
Now, consider these statements as arguments OY
justifications that someone might give for owning
something. Judge how strong each of these would be as
arguments for ownership in general. Use the following
scale, with a low value meaning a weaker argument and
high value meaning a stronger argument.
1=VERY WEAK 2=WEAK 3=FAIR 4=STRONG 5=VERY STRONG
Then each of the criteria was presented in an argument
format, e.g. "Purchase: I own it because I paid for it."
Finally, the fourth section of the questionnaire on the last
page asked follow-up questions about sex, age, educational
achievement, and recall strategies for listing examples. of
things that are not owned. Additionally, subjects were
thanked for their participation, were informed how to return
the questionnaire, and were given a brief explanation of the
purpose of the study, as agreed upon in the consent form.
In total, 100 versions of the questionnaire were
prepared using a program written in WBASIC, with subsequent
scripting by the Documentation Compilation Facility of the
IBM 4341. On each of these versions, the order of the four
sections of the questionnaire was not changed, but the items
within the sections were randomly reordered. For example,