DEVELOPING AND VALIDATING ATTITUDES TOWARDS WOMEN IN POLITICS SCALE

Abstract

Even though much effort has been dedicated to gender equality, there are still many areas in which these efforts have not been influential. One such issue is women's participation in the political sphere. The current study aims to pave the way for understanding the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in the political sphere by developing and validating the Attitudes Toward Women in Politics Scale (ATWP). The study used a sample of METU students from departments other than the social sciences (N = 40). The ATWP consists of 3 dimensions and 31 items, 16 of which are reversed. The analysis results indicated that the ATWP has high internal reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha value of .855. As for convergent validity, Attitude Towards Women Managers (ATWoM) was used, and a moderate positive correlation between ATWP and ATWoM was found. Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA) was administered for the discriminant validity, in which correlation analysis yielded a negatively moderate relationship with ATWP. Regarding criterion validity, our scale did not predict voting behavior, as measured by a single question. To conclude, it was found that the ATWP is a reliable scale, but lacks convergent and criterion validity.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62185/issn.3023-5448.2.1.2