Comparative validation of self-report measures of negative attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.

INTRODUCTION

This study sought to determine the construct validity of two self-report measures of attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders against an implicit measure of attitude.

METHOD

Total of 102 volunteer participants completed the three measures in a randomized order. The explicit measures of prejudice towards Aboriginal Australians were the Modern Racism Scale (MRS) and the Attitudes Towards Indigenous Australians Scale (ATIAS). The implicit attitudes measure was an adaptation of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and utilised simple drawn head-and-shoulder images of Aboriginal Australians and White Australians as the stimuli.

RESULTS

Both explicit measures and implicit measure varied in the extent to which negative prejudicial attitudes were held by participants, and the corresponding construct validities were unimpressive. The MRS was significantly correlated with the IAT, (r =.314;p<.05) where the ATIAS was not significantly correlated with IAT scores (r =.12).

CONCLUSION

Of the two self-report measures of attitudes towards Aboriginal Australians, only the MRS evidenced validity when compared with the use of an implicit attitude measure.