Publication details
Jak měřit bezmocnost
| Title in English | On measuring powerlessness |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Data a výzkum |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | Powerlessness scale; standard instrument measuring; Neal Powerlessness Scale |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The paper deals with powerlessness as one of the possible meanings of alienation, and presents the Neal Powerlessness Scale as a means for measuring this characteristic. The aim of our research was to find out if we can adopt the Neal research technique, developed in the context of the American culture in the late 1950s, to the Czech empirical sociology because we do not dispose of any standard instrument measuring a person sense of possibility to influence socio-political events yet. We have preliminarily checked up reliability and internal and external validity of the Neal scale on a non-representative sample of the Czech population. Results of the quantitative analysis suggest that the index summarising nine of the original twelve items of the scale could be a reliable and valid measure of a person sense of control over the socio-political events also in the Czech cultural milieu. The process of data collection, however, has pointed out several problematic aspects of the Neal indicator, and therefore we recommend certain alterations before its further testing in the Czech context. |
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