Scale development for measuring stance as degree of accommodation

This study develops a multiple-item scale for measuring public relations stance, as the starting point for making strategies and tactics. Following the conceptualization and operationalization of stance as degree of accommodation, one judge panel and two PRSA member survey data sets are employed for scale development and testing. The scale's reliability, factorial structure and validity are further assessed. This systematic procedure provides a valid and reliable scale with two clusters of enactments of stance: action-based accommodation and qualified-rhetoric-mixed accommodation. This scale can be used by practitioners to measure the organization and its publics' willingness to take accommodation in a given situation, as well as how these stances evolve and/or persist longitudinally. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.