“Intolerance of Ambiguity,” Walk's a Scale: Historical Comment

Abstract

Walk's A Scale has been reported to be associated positively and significantly with attitude measures of authoritarianism. The present writer, using two independent samples, found the Walk A Scale to have virtually no internal consistency. With 128 male university students, the application of the K-R 20 produced an r of .08. With 88 male college and female nursing students, use of the Tryon's Variance Form gave an r of .10. Moreover, computation of an inter-item correlational matrix for the 8 Walk A Scale items on the second sample produced consistently low, predominantly non-significant, and in one-third of the cases negative coefficients. Since these results indicate that Walk's A Scale it not homogeneous in a statistical sense, the scale should not be considered as a pure measure of “intolerance of ambiguity.”