Beliefs about Law Enforcement (BALE) Scale: A Revalidation Study

Overview: The original, 15-item, Beliefs about Law Enforcement (O-BALE) scale was developed to measure beliefs about law enforcement violence and bias against Black Americans. Using a new sample (Nf229), the current revalidation study employed factor analytic and other statistical techniques to further strengthen the validity and reliability of the O-BALE scale.Proposal text:

Background: Recent shootings of unarmed African-American community members by police officers and subsequent non-indictments have spawned widespread social activism and increased scrutiny of law enforcement agencies (Teasley et al., 2018; Jackson et al., 2021; Holmes, 2020). Rooted in critical race theory (Crenshaw, 2011), the original Beliefs about Law Enforcement (O-BALE) scale, which measured beliefs about police-perpetrated violence against Black U.S. Americans, was validated with a sample of 288 BSW, MSW, and undergraduate Child and Family Study students (Author et al., 2020). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA, Browne, 2001) was used to assess the factor structure of the original 18-item O-BALE scale(Model 1). A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) yielded indices indicating that the fit for the second-order, 15-item model(Model 2), as compared to Model 1, was improved (Awang, 2015; Hu & Bentler, 1999; Kelloway, 2014). Three factors comprised Model 2: Factor 1 (7 items)=negative perceptions about police use of force, Factor 2 (6 items)=importance of police training, and Factor 3 (2 items)=body cameras for police accountability. The O-BALE scale achieved good internal consistency reliability(α=.87). The current revalidation study sought to address limitations in the original study, by increasing the number of response options (from 5 to 7), drawing the sample from a different population of MSW-only students, establishing test-retest reliability (T-RR), assessing for social desirability bias, and employing factor analytic and other statistical techniques to further strengthen the validity of the O-BALE scale.

Methodology: Data were collected from 229 MSW-only students in a southern U.S. public university. The revalidation survey incorporated the 15-item O-BALE scale (Author et al., 2020), the 33-item Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960), and 11 items measuring sociodemographic information. Using a 7-point Likert-type scale, respondents indicated their level of agreement with statements regarding negative perceptions about police use of force and criminalization of Black Americans. The O-BALE scale was administered at baseline and re-administered to the same respondents two weeks later to assess T-RR. After eliminating three items vulnerable to social desirability bias, researchers performed EFA to measure the factor structure of the resultant 12-item O-BALE scale and employed CFA to determine whether the EFA model offered optimal data fit.

Results: EFA and subsequent reliability testing yielded a one-factor solution with 10 items underlying students’ perceptions of police violence. CFA resulted in the removal of two items with lower factor loadings (