Metric Properties of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale among Mexican Medical Students

• Main Authors: José Moral de la Rubia, Adrián Valle de la O
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas 2020-09-01
• Series: Revista de Psicología y Ciencias del Comportamiento de la Unidad Académica de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales
• Subjects: authoritarianism; psychometrics; attitude; medical students
• Online Access: https://revistapcc.uat.edu.mx/index.php/RPC/article/view/361

The objectives of this research were to test the in-ternal consistency, structural validity and concurrent validity of the Right Authoritarianism Scale (RWA-12) and to describe its distribution. The RWA-12, the Scale of Attitude towards Lesbians and Gay Men, the Scale of Attitude towards People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding were ap-plied to a non-probability sample of medical students from Monterrey, Mexico. After eliminating four cases due to missing data, a sample of 198 participants was analyzed. The three-factor model was invalidated. The scale was reduced to six items (RWA-6) and it showed a unifactorial structure with a close data fit. Its internal consistency reliability was good. Its distribution had a positive skew. Its average showed a liberal position. Its strength of association was medium with attitude towards homosexual people and small with attitude towards PLWHA. Both correlations were substantial after controlling for social desirability. It is concluded that RWA-6 is unidimensional, reliable and valid to assess authoritarianism as a submission-and-conformism trait.