Abstract ABSTRACT: Attitudes towards establishment of schools of accountancy of six potentially affected groups are examined. The semantic differential is used to measure attitudes and a different set of scales, known as the AB scales, are used to infer the underlying structure of the attitudes. The results of the semantic differential measure are consistent with prior studies in that deans are generally unfavorable to schools of accountancy and accounting department chairpersons and accounting practitioners are favorable. In addition, three new groups were tested with non-accounting business school faculty expressing a negative attitude, accounting faculty reflecting a positive attitude and students registering a slightly favorable attitude. The AB scales measure the underlying structure of the general attitudes and make it feasible to design strategies for changing the strength and direction of these attitudes.
Rayburn et al. (Sat,) studied this question.