Title

The Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy: An Empirical Test of Core Theoretical Propositions

Authors

Authors

J. M. Gau

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Crim. Justice

Keywords

PUBLIC SATISFACTION; COEFFICIENT-ALPHA; PERCEPTIONS; DETERRENCE; CRIME; ENCOUNTERS; INJUSTICE; ATTITUDES; SANCTION; Criminology & Penology

Abstract

Purpose: Procedural justice and police legitimacy have been recognized as important antecedents to people's willingness to cooperate with police officers and obey the law. What existing literature lacks, however, is a thorough psychometric examination of procedural justice and police legitimacy with respect to convergent and discriminant validity. Methods: The present study employs confirmatory factor analysis to examine convergent and discriminant validity and ordinary least squares regression to assess whether revised scales operate similarly to ones used in past research. Results: Results suggest that the legitimacy construct is not internally consistent and that one of its subscales loads with the procedural justice items to form a single scale composed of both procedural justice and legitimacy items. Regression analyses indicate that the modified measures operate similarly to traditional ones. Conclusion: It is urged that researchers pursue the theoretical and empirical development of procedural justice and police legitimacy in order to further the study of the normative model of policing. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume

39

Issue/Number

6

Publication Date

1-1-2011

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

489

Last Page

498

WOS Identifier

WOS:000297779000005

ISSN

0047-2352

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