The Attribution Questionnaire (AQ)[1] is a 27-item self-report assessment tool designed to measure public stigma towards people with mental illnesses.
It assesses emotional reaction and discriminatory responses based on answers to a hypothetical vignette about a man with schizophrenia named Harry.
Responses assessing stigma towards Harry are in the form of 27 items rated on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 9 (very much).
The AQ was created in 2003 by Dr. Patrick Corrigan and colleagues and has since been revised into smaller tests because of the complexity and hypothetical that did not capture children and adolescent's stigmas well.
These attributions about the causes of mental illness can lead toward stigmatizing behaviors such as blame and refusal to help.
A study in 2003 by Corrigan, Markowitz, Watson, Rowan, and Kubiak researched the validity of the AQ and analyzed the different aspects of public stigma toward mental illness.
This scale also has a revised Level of Contact Report to assess familiarity with mental illness.
Here is the rubric for evaluating the reliability of scores on a measure for the purpose of evidence based assessment.
A later factor analysis of the AQ-27 that was conducted in 2008 yielded alphas that ranged from 0.60 to .93, supporting the original study's findings.
The Attribution Questionnaire is not widely used right now and there has yet to be a single best method established for measuring mental health stigma.
As more research is done on this topic, the AQ may begin to be used widespread and potentially be applied to a clinical setting.
More studies need to be conducted on the AQ's reliability and validity before determining how effective of a measure it is.
The AQ is a self-report measure which allows for the subject to give lower scores to the items they think would be seen as stigmatizing or discriminatory towards those with mental illness in order to make themselves look better.
Additionally, most of the studies on the AQ have been conducted in United States populations which does not make it generalizable to those outside of the US.