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A survey of the causal attributions of successful and unsuccessful medical school applicants yields evidence that attribution theories are applicable to impactful events outside the laboratory. Applicants viewed admission decisions based on controllable factors as fairer than those based on external or ascribed factors, and they demonstrated ego-defensive attributional tendencies by rating controllable factors as more important causes of success than of failure. The extension of social-psychological theories outside the laboratory through survey and other techniques is advocated.

Several researchers have called for investigation of the psychometric properties of widely used attributional measures. Models involving multiple indicators of a latent (unmeasured) variable provide a valuable approach to this type of problem. A strategy that gives evidence about the relative merit of several attributional measures is illustrated. In general it appears that the best item of those tested is one asking for ratings of the cause of an event on a scale from dispositional to situational. A question about predicted recurrence of the event serves almost as well, while questions about the actor's freedom in, and responsibility for, the event are substantially less adequate measures of an underlying attributional construct.