Annual of social work, Vol. 11 No. 2, 2004.
Original scientific paper
MEASUREMENT OF ATTITUDES TOWARD RAPE VICTIMS: A modification of Field's ATR scale
Željka Kamenov
Tajana Ljubin
Maja Vurnek
Abstract
During the last thirty years there has been a growing interest in the world in researching attitudes toward rape. In Croatia, research in this field has begun only recently, and there is still no standardized instrument for measuring attitudes toward rape. Therefore, the aim of this study was to validate one of the most popular measurse – Field's Attitude Toward Rape Scale, and, if content and psychometric analysis suggests so, to propose a modification of the scale for its use in Croatia.
The study comprised 473 first and second year students from University of Zagreb (245 female and 228 male). Rape Myth Acceptance Scale was used as external criteria.
Results revealed that the factor structure found in Field's study was not replicated in the Croatian sample. Item analysis showed that the scale measures similar, but various objects. The Scale was modified on the basis of two criteria: (a) items measuring beliefs were excluded; (b) items correlated less than 0.30 with total result on the scale were excluded also. The New scale consists of 16 items measuring attitudes toward rape victims. The scale demonstrated one factor structure, and proved to be higly internally consistent (alpha= 0.87) and strongly correlated with external criteria.
Keywords
attitudes toward rape; rape victims; Field’s Attitude Toward Rape Scale
Hrčak ID:
3391
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2004.
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