Development and Validation of the Attitude Towards Corruption Scale

Despite the national outrage against corruption and steps taken by governments of Nigeria to combat the monster, one major lacuna in the efforts to combat it remains the dearth of objective psychological measurement tools. The development of the Attitude Towards Corruption Scale is an effort to meet this need. An initial 68 Items were generated through review of different literature and interviews which items were reduced to 34 through expert review for face validity. The scale was administered to 343 participants selected through convenience sampling technique. Selected participants were from the Nigerian Police Force and other non-military workers comprising teachers and Civil Society workers (MALE=181, FEMALE= 120, and 42 participants who did not specify their sexes) in Lagos State. The Kaiser-Meryer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy, approximated Chi-square and Barlett’s test of sphericity yielded acceptable values. Data obtained was subjected to factor analysis to identify the inherent factors and to identify items with the least latent root for possible removal. Using the Principal Component factoring procedure with Varimax rotation on the SPSS software, the data yielded a 10-factor solution. Items were further restricted to load on a 4-factor model and items which did not load on any of the factors were deleted. These factors are: fraud, embezzlement, nepotism and bribery. The scale yielded a Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of .91 and a Convergent validity coefficient of .33 with the Psychopathic Deviate Scale; thus, showing that the ATC-Scale is a valid and reliable instrument.