ABSTRACT

Measurement of U.S. American community members’ perceptions of police historically has failed to assess police bias, violence, and accountability in Black communities. Rooted in critical race theory, conflict theory, and a substantial corpus of self-reported survey research methodology, the present study describes the development of the Beliefs About Law Enforcement (BALE) scale. Guided by a multidisciplinary and multiracial panel, whose members possess the requisite substantive and methodological expertise, BALE scale items were constructed and factor analytic techniques were performed using a purposive sample of 288 MSW, BSW, and undergraduate child and family study students. Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the factor structure of the original 18-item BALE scale (Model 1). A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis yielded indexes indicating that the fit for the second order 15-item model was improved (Model 2) as compared to Model 1. The BALE scale achieved good internal consistency reliability (α=.87, composite reliability=.96). Limitations of the study are delineated and the utility of the BALE scale in developing and furthering knowledge in social work education and research is discussed.

摘要

从历史上衡量美国美国社区成员对警察的看法一直无法评估黑人社区中警察的偏见，暴力和问责制。本研究扎根于批判种族理论，冲突理论和大量自我报告的调查研究方法论中，描述了执法信念（BALE）量表的发展。在一个多学科和多种族的专家小组的指导下，该小组的成员具有必要的实质和方法专业知识，构建了BALE量表，并使用了288名MSW，BSW和本科生的儿童及家庭研究学生的目标样本，进行了因子分析技术。探索性因子分析用于评估原始的18个项目BALE量表（模型1）的因子结构。随后的验证性因子分析得出的指标表明，与模型1相比，二阶15项模型的拟合度得到了改善（模型2）。BALE量表实现了良好的内部一致性可靠性（α= .87，复合可靠性= .96） ）。界定了研究的局限性，并讨论了BALE量表在社会工作教育和研究中发展和扩展知识的效用。