Measuring Attitudes About Hate: Development of the Hate Crime Beliefs Scale

Abstract

Employing the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) of 2009 and other such legislation as a backdrop, the present study evaluated the nature of beliefs about hate-crime legislation, offenders, and victims. In addition, it investigated construct validity (i.e., political beliefs and prejudice) and predictive validity (i.e., blame attribution and sentencing recommendations). A total of 403 U.S. adults completed measures of prejudice and an initial pool of 50 items forming the proposed Hate Crime Beliefs Scale (HCBS). Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four hate-crime vignettes, which varied in regard to type of prejudice (racial-, sexual orientation-, transgender-, and religion-based prejudices) and then responded to blame and sentencing questions. Factor analyses of the HCBS resulted in four sub-scales: Negative Views (i.e., higher scores reflect negative views of legislation and minority group protection), Offender Punishment (i.e., higher scores suggest endorsement of greater punishment), Deterrence (i.e., greater scores denote support for hate-crime legislation as a deterrent of more violence), and Victim Harm (i.e., higher scores reflect pro-victim attitudes). Greater pro-legislation and pro-victim beliefs were related to liberal political beliefs and less prejudicial attitudes, with some exceptions. Controlling for a number of demographic, situational, and attitudinal covariates, the Negative Views sub-scale displayed predictive utility, such that more negative views of legislation/minority group protection were associated with elevated victim blame, as well as lower perpetrator blame and sentencing recommendations. Results are discussed in the context of hate-crime research and policy, with additional implications considered for trial strategy, modern prejudice, and blame attribution theory.

Understanding Public Attitudes to Hate: Developing and Testing a U.K. Version of the Hate Crime Beliefs Scale

“…Controlling for demographic factors appeared to have little influence on our results, however the relatively few males in the sample may have led to a degree of bias and this should be acknowledged. In this respect, our studies share the limitations acknowledged by Cabeldue et al (2018) in that particpants were not particularly diverse.…”

“…Fit criteria remained strong (Table 1: 3 factor model, 20 items) and the subscales each had strong alpha coefficients (Denial .90, Compassion .76, Sentencing .89). Table 2 presents the final 20 items and their factor loadings from Cabeldue et al (2018) and from our analyses above. We predicted a positive association between left wing political orientation and provictim/legislation attitudes in line with that reported by Cabeldue et al (2018).…”

“…Table 2 presents the final 20 items and their factor loadings from Cabeldue et al (2018) and from our analyses above. We predicted a positive association between left wing political orientation and provictim/legislation attitudes in line with that reported by Cabeldue et al (2018). We coded political beliefs such that a lower score indicated more left wing attitudes and a higher score more right wing attitudes.…”

“…Accordingly, a growing body of research aims to understand public attitudes concerning hate offences and associated legislation, especially in the US (e.g., Cramer, et al, 2013;Mallett et al, 2011;Saucier et al, 2017). To this end, Cabeldue, Cramer, Kehn, Crosby, and Anastasi (2018) developed the Hate Crime Beliefs Scale (HCBS), a 40 item psychometric measure which assesses public beliefs across four subscales: Negative Views (i.e., higher scores reflect negative views of legislation and minority group protection), Offender Punishment (i.e., higher scores suggest endorsement of greater punishment), Deterrence (i.e., greater scores denote support for hate-crime legislation as a deterrent of more violence), and Victim Harm (i.e., higher scores reflect pro-victim attitudes). The Negative Views sub-scale displayed predictive utility, such that more negative views of legislation/minority group protection were associated with elevated victim blame, as well as lower perpetrator blame and sentencing recommendations.…”

“…However, while a valuable contribution to the research toolkit, some HCBS items are culturally specific to the US where the scale was developed, for instance several items refer to African Americans and one refers to the First Amendment. Cabeldue et al (2018)…”