The OM scale: a comparative socio-psychological measure of individual modernity

Attitudinal modernity may be defined as a set of attitudes, beliefs, behavior, etc. especially characterizing persons in highly urbanized, highly industrialized, and highly educated social settings. Over 150 interview items attempting to measure modernity so defined were administered as part of a four hour interview to 5,500 men from 6 different developing countries-Argentina, Chile, India, Pakistan, Israel and Nigeria. Using a subset of 119 strictly attitudinal items, the present paper attempts to derive a simple, comparative, overall measure of the modernity of individuals. The resulting measure was called "OM," standing for "Overall Modernity." Two major types of OM measures were derived, one using item analysis methods and one using criterion group methods. The final short OM scale suggested consists of items meeting both selection procedures simultaneously.