| The purpose of this study was the development of an instrument that can be used to (1) outline a typology of ideology by defining three attitudinal constructs (a.k.a., social attitudes model), (2) depict eleven ideologies (i.e., paleoconservatism, neoconservatism, liberalism, anarchism, libertarianism, communism, socialism, fascism, environmentalism, Christian fundamentalism, radical feminism) in three dimensions based on the attitudinal constructs, and (3) construct a quantitative measure for each of the eleven different ideologies.;A six-factor solution was accepted as the base of the social attitudes model from which a second-order PCF provided the desired three broader constructs (i.e., dimensions). A hierarchical social attitudes model was constructed comprised of the following dimensions and subfactors respectively, civil liberties (political correctness and individualism), morality (religion and social welfare), and globalism (environmentalism and collectivism).;Spatially, most of the eleven ideologies clustered into two distinct groups. One group consisted of ideologies historically associated with the "right," and includes paleoconservatism, neoconservatism, fascism, and Christian fundamentalism. The other distinct group clustered ideologies historically associated with the "left," and includes anarchism, radical feminism, liberalism, socialism, and communism. Environmentalism and libertarianism placed outside these groupings. Even though the ideologies were, essentially, grouped, there was a great deal of similarity with the unidimensional left-right ideology model. Conceptually, a unidimensional model can be drawn across a diagonal of the three dimensions which incorporated most of the ideologies under study.;Respondent similarity to each of the eleven ideologies was calculated in order to forge a measure for each perspective. Distinctions were made to categorize the respondents according to their proclivity in each ideology. Neoconservatism manifested the largest number of adherents in the first two categories (65), followed by environmentalism (46). Communism, liberalism, and radical feminism produced the fewest adherents in these categories (3). |
