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

    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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