METHODOLOGICAL CORRECTNESS OF RESEARCH IN MEASURING IMPLICIT ATTITUDES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

Implicit measures of attitudes provide an assessment of attitudes that respondents are unwilling to express or might not be aware of. This paper presents a systematic review of scientific literature in the field of measuring implicit attitudes, in which the current state and position of this construct are reviewed with the aim of assessing the meeting of scientific methodological criteria of knowledge acquisition. Empirical materials were obtained in February 2023 through the following search engines and platforms: Google, Google Scholar, SAGE, APA PsycNet, EBSCO, ScienceDirect, ResearchGate and JSTOR. Inclusion criteria: a paper published in a scientific journal, in English, available in its entirety in electronic form, in the field of psychology/social sciences, published from 2000 to the date of the search. In most reviewed sources, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) instrument was used, so this was added as an inclusion criterion. The final number of studies for analysis was 22 – five review papers and 17 research papers, mostly experimental studies. The papers were published in scientific journals with a high impact factor, written in the IMRAD format, the methods used were adequately presented, systematically controlled research procedures and appropriate statistical techniques were used, the conclusions were based on data, and the critical attitude of the researchers is present. The metric characteristics of the instruments are generally at an acceptable level – adequate internal consistency reliability, convergent and internal validity, predictive ability, but there are problems in the domain of construct and ecological validity.