Development of a Social Distance Scale

A pool of 34 items was presented to 276 enlisted personnel for evaluation of the degree of personal interaction implied in each statement. The distribution of judgments resulting from this procedure served as a basis for establishing social distance scale values through use of the method of successive intervals. Nine items were selected for the final scale on the basis of having met the following criteria 1 coverage of a wide range of closeness in personal interaction, 2 non-overlapping of item content, and 3 approximately equal size in social distance between items. Stability for the items was established by correlating the scale values based on random halves of the total sample rho .97. This scale, designed to measure willingness to engage in social contact with host country nationals, will be incorporated into survey instruments covering issues of living in an overseas environment.