Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

680 Chapter 21
open-ended interviews as important to women: (1) Does your partner take
responsibility for the children for an evening or an afternoon when you have
something to do? (TIME) (2) Does your partner take time off from work to
share responsibility for children who are sick? (SICK) (3) Does your partner
talk with you and respect your opinion? (TALK) (4) Does your partner spend
his free time with you? (FREET)
Table 21.24 shows the results for Antigua and St. Lucia.
TABLE 21.24
Handwerker’s Data from Antigua and St. Lucia
Antigua
St. Lucia
Variable Domestic Children Affection Domestic Children Affection
COOK 0.793 0.317 0.106 0.783 0.182 0.161
WASH 0.845 0.163 0.090 0.818 0.056 0.018
DISH 0.791 0.320 0.203 0.781 0.197 0.173
BATHE 0.493 0.654 0.207 0.695 0.584 0.090
TAKE 0.271 0.738 0.289 0.246 0.790 0.196
TIME 0.253 0.820 0.258 0.228 0.833 0.061
SICK 0.210 0.786 0.151 0.121 0.742 .067
FREET 0.100 0.299 0.802 .010 0.691 0.319
EQUAL 0.147 0.155 0.898 0.177 0.117 0.883
TALK 0.142 0.200 0.883 0.113 0.112 0.909
Explained variance 26.460 26.459 25.051 24.188 27.905 18.191
SOURCE: W. P. Handwerker, ‘‘Constructing Likert Scales: Testing the Validity and Reliability of Single Measures
of Multidimensional Variables,’’ 1996a, Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal, Vol. 8, no. 1, p. 3,
1996a. Reprinted with Permission of Sage Publications.
There are at least four things to notice about table 21.24:
1. Despite the subtraction of some variables and the addition of others, the results
from all three islands are very stable. COOK, WASH, and DISH are components
of a single large factor across all three Caribbean countries.
2. While BATHE loads high on the domestic chore factor across all three islands,
it also loads high on the children factor for two of the islands. This item should
be dropped in the future because it does not reliably distinguish the two factors.
3. FREET loads on the children factor for St. Lucia, but it loads on the affection
factor for Antigua. It turns out that Handwerker’s assistant changed the wording
for the FREET question slightly when she did the interviews on Antigua. Instead
of asking: ‘‘Does your partner spend his free time with you?’’ she asked ‘‘Does
your partner spend his free time with you or with your children?’’ (Handwerker
1996a:3). That little change apparently made enough of a difference in the
responses to change the factor loading.