Confirmatory factorial validity and reliability of the Global Belief in a Just World Scale – GJWS

Authors

  • Valdiney V. Gouveia Universidade Federal da Paraíba
  • Carlos Eduardo Pimentel Universidade de Brasília
  • Jorge Artur Peçanha de Miranda Coelho Universidade Federal de Alagoas
  • Viviane Andrade Prado Maynart Universidade Tiradentes
  • Tamara dos Santos Mendonça Universidade Tiradentes

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5380/psi.v14i1.12687

Keywords:

validity, reliability, belief in a just world, justice

Abstract

The belief in a just world is an essential construct for justice from a psychosocial perspective. However, only a few researchers in Brazilian psychology have being interested on this theme. In order to contribute to this subject, this study aimed at knowing the validity and reliability of the Global Belief in a Just World Scale (GJWS), and to verify the importance of gender, age, course, grade level, religiosity degree, marital status and income to account for its scores. This measure presented originally good psychometric properties, besides being of simple and rapid administration. Participants were 254 undergraduate students of a private university from Aracaju (Sergipe), with mean age of 21.8 years (sd = 6.34), most of them female, single, middle-class, attending the courses of Law and Psychology. They filled the GJWS – a unifactor brief measure, composed by seven items that assess the beliefs in a just world, rated on a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = Strongl disagree to 6 = Strongly agree. The main results showed that the GJWS is a valid and reliable instrument, and can be used in studies on this theme. The demographic variables didn’t show the expected importance though. Finally, the limitations of the current research and directions for future studies are discussed.

 

Keywords: validity; reliability; belief in a just world; justice.

Author Biographies

Valdiney V. Gouveia, Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Professor Adjunto IV da Universidade Federal da Paraíba. Orientador de Doutorado. Bolsista de Produtividade em Pesquisa 1B do CNPq.

Carlos Eduardo Pimentel, Universidade de Brasília

Bolsista do CNPq no Doutorado em Psicologia Social, do Trabalho e das Organizações na Universidade de Brasília.

Jorge Artur Peçanha de Miranda Coelho, Universidade Federal de Alagoas

Professor no curso de Psicologia da Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL). Doutor em Psicologia Social.

Viviane Andrade Prado Maynart, Universidade Tiradentes

Estudante do Curso de Formação em Psicologia da Universidade Tiradentes. Estagiária de psicologia no DETRAN-SE.

Tamara dos Santos Mendonça, Universidade Tiradentes

Estudante do Curso de Formação em Psicologia da Universidade Tiradentes.

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Published

2010-10-25

How to Cite

Gouveia, V. V., Pimentel, C. E., Coelho, J. A. P. de M., Maynart, V. A. P., & Mendonça, T. dos S. (2010). Confirmatory factorial validity and reliability of the Global Belief in a Just World Scale – GJWS. Interação Em Psicologia, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.5380/psi.v14i1.12687

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2010)

Section

Articles

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