SOME TESTS OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ATTITUDE AND PERCEIVED BEHAVIORAL-CONTROL

Although perceived behavioural control has recently become a popular v ariable for use in predicting behaviour or intention to behave, it is far from clear that this variable is theoretically distinguishable fro m attitude. Consequently, we performed some tests of the distinction b etween attitude and perceived behavioural control. In Expt 1, using pa rticipants from an American university, the semantic differential scal es that have often been used to measure attitude and perceived behavio ural control were submitted to factor analyses. Consistent with the di stinction, a two-factor solution resulted in the attitude and perceive d behavioural control items clearly loading on different factors. Furt her, Expt 2 demonstrated that the attitude factor predicts behavioural beliefs and does not predict control beliefs, but the reverse is true concerning the perceived behavioural control factor. Finally, in Expt s 3-5, the beliefs presumed to underlie these two variables were clust er analysed. Consistent with the distinction, and paralleling findings obtained by Trafimow & Fishbein (1995), the order in which participan ts wrote down their beliefs exhibited significant clustering by belief type.