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Development of the Attitudes Towards Police Legitimacy Scale Short Form: A Rasch Analysis

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Abstract

The objective of this research was to develop a shorter version of the Attitudes Towards Police Legitimacy Scale (APLS) using Rasch analysis. Two studies are conducted here to reduce the 34-item APLS to the 11-item APLS Short Form (APLS-SF). It was hypothesized that the APLS-SF would also predict right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance, support for police in a hypothetical donation task, and justification of an officer involved shooting. In study 1 (N = 300) and study 2 (N = 600), participants were sampled from Prolific Academic. The APLS-SF fit the Rasch model and predicted each variable as hypothesized.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on: https://osf.io/jf2qn/.

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This work was supported by internal funding.

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Correspondence to Joshua J. Reynolds.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Reynolds, J.J. Development of the Attitudes Towards Police Legitimacy Scale Short Form: A Rasch Analysis. J Police Crim Psych 38, 702–715 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-023-09597-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-023-09597-z

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