Assessing Police Violence and Bias Against Black U.S. Americans: Development and Validation of the Beliefs About Law Enforcement Scale

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2020

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.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Journal of Social Work Education

First Page

664

Last Page

682

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