A short version of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale

A bias-corrected exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of right-wing authoritarianism: Support for a three-factor structure

“…Some researchers have simply assumed this tridimensionality and created face-valid shortforms with subscales (e.g., Smith & Winter, 2002). Other researchers have created short-form subscales by changing the original RWA items to eliminate the complexloading items and balancing item direction within each subscale to avoid acquiescence bias (Funke, 2005), or used statistical methods to create the optimal three-factor subscales by eliminating items requiring correlated errors (Manganelli Rattazzi, et al, 2007). Previous researchers have also demonstrated the utility of analysing results at the sub-scale level (Duncan, et al, 1997;Smith & Winter, 2002), even showing that a failure to do so may lead to biased results based on statistical artefacts (Mavor, et al, 2009).…”

“…Together, these issues have made it very difficult to show the underlying structure of the scale using either exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis methods (Funke, 2005). While some researchers have tackled the issue of the complex item structure (e.g., Funke, 2005;Manganelli Rattazzi, Bobbio, & Canova, 2007), our main goal will be to complement these other approaches by addressing the confound due to item wording direction. We believe that this will provide convergent evidence of the underlying structure of the scale and encourage more researchers to explore authoritarianism at the component level of analysis.…”

Right-wing authoritarianism, fundamentalism and prejudice revisited: Removing suppression and statistical artefact

“…RWA is an individual difference construct that represents the covariation of three underlying clusters: authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1981(Altemeyer, , 1988(Altemeyer, , 1996. Although researchers recognise the importance of distinguishing the underlying clusters (e.g., Funke, 2005;Manganelli Rattazzi, Bobbio, & Canova, 2007;Smith & Winter, 2002), the design of the RWA scale makes it difficult for the three components to emerge separately. Items were designed by Altemeyer to tap into multiple clusters emphasising the central construct and diluting the differences between clusters.…”

“…Wording direction also conceals the factor structure, since aggression items tend to be worded in a construct positive direction, and conventionalism items in a construct negative direction (Duckitt & Fisher, 2003;Funke, 2005;Manganelli Rattazzi, Bobbio, & Canova, 2007). Accordingly, a two-factor solution is sometimes discarded as representing method factors (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996).…”

“…Several researchers have created shortened subscale measures from the full RWA scale based on face validity grounds (Duncan, Peterson, & Winter, 1997;Funke, 2005;Manganelli Rattazzi, Bobbio, & Canova, 2007;Smith & Winter, 2002).…”