RAPS 2--An Abridged Version of the Racial Attitudes and Perceptions Survey
Abstract
This report describes efforts to make the Racial Attitudes and Perceptions Survey (RAPS) a more efficient and useful management tool for Army commanders to use in monitoring the racial climate in their units. These efforts consisted of an abridgement of the RAPS that resulted in a significant reduction in the time and manpower required to administer this instrument and to analyze the resultant data. Since the Incidence of Discriminatory Behavior (IDB) section of the RAPS was designed for item-by-item analysis, it was not possible to shorten it without reducing its scope. The other major section of the RAPS, the Racial Perceptions Inventory (RPI), became the focus of the abridgement procedure because its principal purpose is the determination of a summary score for each of the four scales included in this section. A subset of items was chosen from each of the RPI scales in such a way as to maximize the predictability of the appropriate scale score that was provided by each item and that was independent of that provided by the rest of the items in the scale. The validity of the resulting abridged scales was determined by calculating the correlation between subjects' scores on the full and on the abridged scales for each of two samples drawn from different Army installations at different times. The results of this analysis indicated high agreement between the two versions of the scales. Inspection of the internal consistency measures of the abridged scales indicates some attenuation. However, the pattern of the results indicates that this may be largely due to sample differences or to the 'aging' of the RAPS rather than to any major psychometric deficiencies of the abridged scales.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1978
- Accession Number
- ADA064256
Entities
People
- Francis E. O'mara
- William Tierney
Organizations
- U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences