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Abstract
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OBJECTIVE: Evaluative attitudes toward violence refer to the extent to which violence is viewed negatively or positively. The purpose of the present study was to replicate and extend previous research to test the extent to which items in typical measures of violent attitudes reflect evaluative attitudes toward violence.
METHOD: A cross-national online panel of men from the community (N = 342) completed self-report measures of attitudes toward violence and violent behavior. Two of the attitude measures were drawn from the forensic/correctional area (Violence Scale of the Measures of Criminal Attitudes and Associates-Revised [MCAA-R-V] and Criminal Attitudes to Violence Scale [CAVS]), whereas the other two focused on evaluative attitudes toward violence (Semantic Differential Scale [SDS] and Evaluation of Violence Questionnaire [EVQ]). Violent behavior was measured with two self-report measures: Violent Behaviour Scale (VBS) and the Violent Behavior Vignette Questionnaire (VBVQ).
RESULTS: Replicating previous results, the items of the SDS formed a separate factor from the items of the MCAA-R-V and the CAVS, and the SDS was independently correlated with violent behavior as measured by the VBS. The extension with the EVQ and VBVQ yielded similar results with the exception that the EVQ items did not form a distinct factor from the MCAA-R-V items.
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that violent attitude scales differ in the extent to which they measure evaluative attitudes toward violence or the aspects of evaluative attitudes toward violence that they measure and that these different scales provide complementary information relevant to violent behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
Language: en |