This is the most up-to-date version of this scale.

Construct Summary

The authors define the construct of general attitudes towards robots as having four attitude factors:

Personal level positive (P+): comfort and enjoyment around robots

Personal level negative (P−): unease and anxiety around robots

Societal level positive (S+): rational hopes about robots in general

Societal level negative (S−): rational worries about robots in general

The authors also define an attitude as follows:

“An attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour.” (p. 1)

Rating = 100%

Check?	Guideline Item
✓	Is the construct defined?
✓	Does the final version of the items capture the construct as it has been defined by the authors?
✓	Is the item generation process discussed (e.g., literature review, Delphi method, crowd-sourcing)?
✓	Person to items 10:1 for the initial set of items?
✓	Did they perform an EFA, PCA, Rasch, or similar test to determine the item to factor relationship?
✓	Did they describe how they determined number of factors?
✓	Did they report the full initial set of items?
✓	Did they provide loadings (EFA) or item fits (Rasch) of all items?
✓	Is there a description of the item removal process (e.g., using infit/outfit, factor loading minimum value, or cross-loading values)?
✓	Did they list the final number of items included in the scale?
✓	Did they include a factor structure test (e.g., second EFA, CFA, DIF, test for unidimensionality when using Rasch, or similar)?
✓	Was a measure of reliability (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha, McDonalds Omega_h or Omega_t, Tarkkonen’s Rho) reported?
✓	Was a test of validity (e.g., predictive, concurrent, convergent, discriminant) reported?

Comments
none

Reviewed by Experts ✓

Downloads

PAPER
Koverola, M., Kunnari, A., Sundvall, J., & Laakasuo, M. (2022). General attitudes towards robots scale (GAToRS): A new instrument for social surveys. International Journal of Social Robotics, 14(7), 1559-1581.

PDF of scale as well as instructions for administration and scoring are not readily available. Check the paper for more details or click here to submit this information if you are the author of this scale.

Final Scale Items (20 total):

Personal Level Positive Attitude (P+)
I can trust persons and organizations related to development of robots
Persons and organizations related to development of robots will consider the needs, thoughts and feelings of their users
I can trust a robot
I would feel relaxed talking with a robot
If robots had emotions, I would be able to befriend them

Personal Level Negative Attitude (P-)
I would feel uneasy if I was given a job where I had to use robots
I fear that a robot would not understand my commands
Robots scare me
I would feel very nervous just being around a robot
I don’t want a robot to touch me

Societal Level Positive Attitude (S+)
Robots are necessary because they can do jobs that are too hard or too dangerous for people
Robots can make life easier
Assigning routine tasks to robots lets people do more meaningful tasks
Dangerous tasks should primarily be given to robots
Robots are a good thing for society, because they help people

Societal Level Negative Attitude (S-)
Robots may make us even lazier
Widespread use of robots is going to take away jobs from people
I am afraid that robots will encourage less interaction between humans
Robotics is one of the areas of technology that needs to be closely monitored
Unregulated use of robotics can lead to societal upheavals