The attitudes of research chemists

Abstract

Principal component analysis of questionnaire data from roughly ⅓ of the nation's PhD graduates in chemistry in 1960-1961 isolated 3 basic attitude patterns: (a) attitudes valuing freedom and "pure science"; (b) materialistic attitudes accepting business values, possibly at the expense of science values; and (c) attitudes which see little conflict between industry and science values. New PhD's with high pure science attitudes tended to enter academic employment; others to enter industry. For an independent sample of 286 industrial chemists, both the orientation to "applied science" and the materialistic orientation were stronger for chemists with high number of years experience than for recent hires. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)