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EXPLORATIONS IN UNORTHODOX POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR: A SCALE TO MEASURE “PROTEST POTENTIAL” *
Author(s) -
MARSH ALAN
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1974.tb01233.x
Subject(s) - construct (python library) , politics , social psychology , psychology , scale (ratio) , affect (linguistics) , construct validity , sample (material) , measure (data warehouse) , population , sociology , developmental psychology , political science , psychometrics , demography , law , geography , computer science , chemistry , cartography , communication , chromatography , database , programming language
A method of measuring attitudes towards examples of unorthodox behaviour is developed, found to be reliable and to possess considerable population and construct validity when deployed among a target‐group sample of students, young workers, older workers, and older middle‐class groups. The structure of attitudes towards unorthodox political behaviour is examined in detail and is found to be characterised by a powerful unidimensional factor of “positive‐to‐negative affect” traversed by strongly related dimensions like approval, justification, behavioural intentions, and even evaluative dimensions like “effectiveness”. A model (akin to Fishbein's formulation) for combining these dimensions into a single measure of “Protest Potential” is derived from regression analysis. The relationships between this new measure and more familiar socio‐political attitudes are examined and some substantive conclusions are indicated, in particular, the role of politicised personal dissatisfaction.