Symbolic racism effects persist even after removing items about government programs

Evidence

Purged symbolic racism scales were created by eliminating items referring explicitly or implicitly to government programs (“Work Way Up,” “Black Welfare,” “Attention from Complaint,” and “Deserve Attention”). These scales have fewer items and slightly lower alpha reliabilities (1986 NES = .68; 1997 LACSS = .77) than the full scales, providing a conservative test of our hypothesis that purged scales would not reduce the effects of symbolic racism. — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 42

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that purge doesn’t reduce effects is central to the measurement critique — whether these subscale items validly capture ‘threat’ rather than mere policy disagreement matters for the reader’s separate-attachment analysis.
• XREF: connects to: Symbolic racism’s policy effects cannot be explained by mere question-content overlap — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3749; Symbolic racism may decompose into separate attitude factors rather than one coherent belief system — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 22; Response biases fail to explain symbolic racism’s predictive findings — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 227 (+1 more)

Related

• Symbolic racism scales measure a construct distinct from the policy preferences they predict. (similarity 0.86)
• Some symbolic racism items overlap tautologically with the policy attitudes they predict (similarity 0.85)
• Response biases fail to explain symbolic racism’s predictive findings (similarity 0.85)
• Symbolic racism scales may measure opposition to big government, not racial attitudes. (similarity 0.84)
• Social desirability bias does not inflate symbolic racism’s link to policy views (similarity 0.83)
• Symbolic racism’s discriminant validity from allied constructs is empirically testable (similarity 0.82)
• Symbolic racism’s policy effects cannot be explained by mere question-content overlap (similarity 0.82)
• Symbolic racism scales measure a distinct attitude rather than mere conservatism (similarity 0.82)
• Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears — The Conceptualization and Measurement of Symbolic Racism (similarity 0.81)
• Subscale choice does not alter symbolic racism’s effect on racial policy even after controls. (similarity 0.81)
• Controversy over symbolic racism measures is empirically moot since all variants predict equally. (similarity 0.81)
• Distinct consequences indicate whether symbolic-racism variants are truly separate constructs. (similarity 0.80)
• Symbolic racism measurement is internally coherent and unified. (similarity 0.79)
• Symbolic racism may decompose into separate attitude factors rather than one coherent belief system (similarity 0.79)
• Symbolic racism measures may overlap conceptually with their outcome variables (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Symbolic racism’s policy effects cannot be explained by mere question-content overlap #corroborates (0.90) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3749
• Response biases fail to explain symbolic racism’s predictive findings #corroborates (0.75) — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 227
• Social desirability bias does not inflate symbolic racism’s link to policy views #corroborates (0.75) — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 226
• Symbolic racism may decompose into separate attitude factors rather than one coherent belief system #contradicts (0.72) — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 22