The semantic differential, a means of measuring attitudes, was administered to 178 fourth grade students to compare attitudes toward health. One school was composed almost entirely of black children from the inner city, the other contained white children from upper middle class homes.
When the children were divided into the two groups by sex, differences between the groups were not statistically significant but there were highly significant differences between the races. Generally, white children held more positive attitudes toward health personnel and health institutions than black children, while on the average black children were less concerned about sickness than white children. Whether these differences in attitude are in some way ethnically determined or based rather on a "culture of poverty" could not be determined from this study.