Abstract
This study sought to determine the construct validity of two self-report measures of attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders against an implicit measure of attitude. Total of 102 volunteer participants completed the three measures in a randomized order. The explicit measures of prejudice towards Aboriginal Australians were the Modern Racism Scale (MRS) and the Attitudes Towards Indigenous Australians Scale (ATIAS). The implicit attitudes measure was an adaptation of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and utilised simple drawn head-and-shoulder images of Aboriginal Australians and White Australians as the stimuli. Both explicit measures and implicit measure varied in the extent to which negative prejudicial attitudes were held by participants, and the corresponding construct validities were unimpressive. The MRS was significantly correlated with the IAT, (r =.314;p<.05) where the ATIAS was not significantly correlated with IAT scores (r =.12). Of the two self-report measures of attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians, only the MRS evidenced validity when compared with the use of an implicit attitude measure.
Highlights
This study sought to determine the construct validity of two self-report measures of attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders against an implicit measure of attitude
Scores on the Modern Racism Scale (MRS) ranged from -11 to +7, with 76% scoring zero or below, indicating they held a positive attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians
D ranged from -1.91 to .74 for the Caucasian and Aboriginal Australian Implicit Association Test (IAT), with the D values in the current sample suggesting that 52% had positive attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians
Summary
This study sought to determine the construct validity of two self-report measures of attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders against an implicit measure of attitude. The explicit measures of prejudice towards Aboriginal Australians were the Modern Racism Scale (MRS) and the Attitudes Towards Indigenous Australians Scale (ATIAS). Results: Both explicit measures and implicit measure varied in the extent to which negative prejudicial attitudes were held by participants, and the corresponding construct validities were unimpressive. Assessment of attitudes poses substantial problems to researchers, where explicit articulation of negative attitudes is frowned upon in some contexts This poses problems for traditional self-report measures in areas of highly sensitive issues, which have the inherent problems of self-presentation bias and demand characteristic biases. Neither have been validated against a non-self-report measure
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