Construction and Validity Evidence of a Brief Self-Report Scale to Assess Authoritarianism

Abstract

Authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism comprise beliefs or attitudes know as authoritarianism. In the present study, we report on the development and the test of the psychometric properties of a brief scale for the assessment of authoritarian tendencies, the Attitudes toward Authoritarianism Scale (ESCAUT). Participants in the study were 786 adults with ages ranging from 18 to 75 years, 70.7 % military. An initial pool of 42 items written to capture the core features of authoritarianism was evaluated by specialists, and then answered by the participants. Results from ordinal factor analysisindicated 20 items with moderately to highly discriminative (factor loadings > .50) of two latent factors: Moral and punitive authoritarianism (α = .88), and submissive authoritarianism (α = .89). Test information curves revealed a broad coverage of the latent trait in both subscales. Moreover, the instrument could discriminate military from non-military participants, with large size differences. The ESCAUT is a brief self-report scale recommended for the assessment of the main features of authoritarianism in the general Latin American population. Limitations of the study are addressed.

Keywords

• actitudes, prejuicio, grupos sociales