A Psychometric Evaluation of African-American Attitudes Toward Capital Punishment and War

Two existing attitude measures: Attitude toward Capital Punishment and Attitude toward War were administered to 215 student participants at a Mississippi university. The primary goal was to establish modem psychometric properties for these two instruments using African-American participants. A 5-point scale was used instead of the 2-point scale originally used in both scales. Using Cronbach's reliability coefficient and factor analysis, the two instruments were found to have reliabilities of 0.74 and 0.82 respectively. Item analyses found shorter and more reliable scales. The factor analysis of the Attitude Toward Capital Punishment scale yielded a 2-factor solution. The factor analysis of the Attitude toward War scale found a 5-factor solution. This research shows that these older instruments can still be useful for current research purposes. The results were different from the ones obtained by Jones-Wiley, Restori, Lee, Humelfart, & Buloot (2007), whose participants were located in California. Researchers are recommended to take into consideration geographical and ethnic differences when using these instruments.