Exploratory Factor Analysis and Psychometric Evaluation of the Teacher Reporting Attitude Scale for Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation of an instrument to measure teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse and discusses the instrument's merit for research into reporting practice. Based on responses from 444 Australian teachers, the Teachers' Reporting Attitude Scale for Child Sexual Abuse was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis. The scale isolated three dimensions: commitment to the reporting role, confidence in the system's response to reports, and concerns about reporting. These three factors accounted for 37.5% of the variance in the 14-item measure. Alpha coefficients for the subscales were 0.769 (commitment), 0.617 (confidence), and 0.661 (concerns). The findings provide insights into the complexity of studying teachers' attitudes toward reporting of child sexual abuse and have implications for future research.

Keywords:

• child sexual abuse
• attitude scale
• exploratory factor analysis
• teacher
• mandatory reporting
• child protection system

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Projects 2006–2008 funding scheme (Project Number DP664847) and a Queensland University of Technology Vice Chancellor's Research Fellowship 2010–2012 (to KW). Research assistance was provided to this project by Sam Kilby, Jane Cronan, and Lisa Chirio. The authors thank all participating school authorities, schools, principals, and teachers.

Notes

¹Child sexual abuse was defined in this way because the study was primarily concerned with victimization of children by adult perpetrators. Therefore, references to peer sexual victimization and harassment are omitted in the definition.

²PASW is the name given to SPSS for the period during its acquisition by IBM.

³Using Cohen's (1988) guide of 0.10 for small effect, 0.30 for medium effect, and 0.50 for large effect.

⁴Cronbach's α of 0.8 is generally accepted to be the appropriate value for claims of reliability in cognitive tests and 0.7 for ability tests. With other psychological constructs, values of below 0.7 can be expected (Field, 2005, p. 668).