Causal Attributions for Unemployment in Barbados

Abstract

The importance of various explanations for unemployment in their country was rated by 468 predominantly young people from the Caribbean island of Barbados. The twenty explanations provided, which were taken from other studies, showed a clear structure. The six factors that emerged from them were lack of effort on the part of the unemployed, lack of ability, failure of trade unions, effects of government policy, regional and world-wide changes, and poor industrial management. Endorsement of these explanations was related to sex, age, and education, but was not related very clearly to employment status.