In Norwegian there is a saying that translates to 'As one shouts into the forest, one will be answered'. It means that a bad question gets a bad answer. Devising questions to elicit responses which tell you something about attitudes is harder than many people realize. Questionnaire development involves numerous kinds of research - first you have to figure out how answers to questions can measure an attitude, and then you have to think up a lot of questions and put them to a lot of people and see whether the answers match what you would expect them to say based on what you might know by some other means about their attitudes. You also need to know that respondents understand the questions the way you intended them to, which involves different kinds of testing. Attitudes and behavior are related but they are far from identical. So once you know about attitudes, you don't necessarily know anything helpful about behavior, either. The people who seem to know the most about how to apply this kind of research most effectively are those who work in marketing. I assume the desire to examine health professionals' attitudes to breastfeeding is motivated by an accomanying desire to improve care to breastfeeding mothers or to breastfed children or both. In that case it is really worthwhile to look at what others have done. There is a questionnaire called the Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale (DE LA AMORA, A., RUSSELL, D., DUNGY, C. I., LOSCH, M. & DUSDIEKER, L. 1999. The Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale: Analysis of Reliability and Validity. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1999., 29, 2362-2380.) which can be used to look at attitudes of mothers or of health professionals. It has been tested for reliabiliy and validity (i.e. consistency of answers has been tested, and whether the questions give information about attitudes to infant feeding rather than information about something else altogether). The authors are generous about sharing it with other researchers. There is also a scale called the Breastfeeding Self-efficacy Scale, developed by an Ontario researcher, Cindy Lee Dennis. I think the first thing she published about it was in JHL (DENNIS, C. L. 1999. Theoretical underpinnings of breastfeeding confidence: a self-efficacy framework. J Hum Lact, 15, 195-201.) She is still researching this area and refining the questionnaire, which is intended for use by mothers but can be useful as a measure of confidence in breastfeeding in whoever is responding to it. Confidence in breastfeeding is closely related to attitudes to breastfeeding too. cheers and good luck Rachel Myr whose entire master's thesis was about reliability testing of a newly developed questionnaire - so I now know more than I ever imagined possible about questionnaire research and the gist of what I know is that I know next to nothing!! PS if what you want to do is generate discussion and provoke thought and perhaps a laugh or two in your respondents, you don't need to go as scientifically to work :-) *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome