Construction and evaluation of the attitude scale towards the homeless

Latinac, Mihaela. (2017). Construction and evaluation of the attitude scale towards the homeless. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Sociology. [mentor Klasnić, Ksenija].

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Abstract

In the initial part of the paper we discuss the absence of a standardized definition of homelessness and we point to the problems that arise or may arise from using different definitions of homelessness. Next we present three perspectives necessary for a holistic study of homelessness and the creation of systematic measures for this social problem: law and social policy research, research into reasons why homeless people became homeless and an examination of their profiles, and finally an examination of public attitudes toward homeless people. In the theoretical part, we present two domains of attitudes toward homelessness – Attribution of Responsibility, and Responsibility Toward the Homeless, which were operationalized and incorporated into a questionnaire. The questionnaire initially consisted of 21 items, while the final version consisted of 20 items. The questionnaire was validated on a nationally representative sample of 2000 respondents in the Republic of Croatia. According to the results of this study, the predetermined theoretical domains were validated – the results of the Principal Component Analysis showed that in the first extracted factor most saturated items emanated from the theoretical domain, Attribution of Responsibility, while in the second and third extracted factors most saturated items emanated from the theoretical domain, Responsibility Toward the Homeless. This inventory does not meet the Carmines and Zeller (1979) criteria of a one-dimensional measuring object but the main finding is that attitudes toward the homeless should be measured in two domains with different criteria of measurement – Attribution of Responsibility and Responsibility Toward the Homeless.

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