VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY STUDY OF A POVERTY PERCEPTION SCALE

ABSTRACT: Poverty and inequality in income distribution are among the most important obstacles to economic development and increased prosperity.Furthermore, with globalization, poverty continues to be a problem for future generations in countries where economic and technological differences are gradually widening.The motivation of the study was the limited number of scales in the literature aimed at measuring the perception of poverty.In this study, in terms of individuals receiving financial aid from the state, a poverty perception scale with 33 items consisting of three subdimensions of absolute poverty, relative poverty, and human poverty was developed and examined for validity and reliability.As the first step in this process, an item pool was created.After providing the content validity of the items presented to experts for their evaluation, a pilot study was carried out for the elimination of potential errors and deficiencies, and the 33-item scale was finalized. The study was carried out with the analysis of 650 people residing in Ağrı city center and different districts and receiving social aids. In order to specify the discrimination power of the survey items, the item-total correlation was calculated, and then the significance of the differences between the item means of the upper 27% and lower 27% groups was investigated utilizing the t-test. Corrected item-total score correlations ranged from 0.577 to 0.711. The results of the test revealed that all the differences between the item means of the upper and lower groups were significant. To specify the construct validity of the scale, first, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted, and a three-factor structure obtained, explaining 75.48% of the total variance. Reliability criterion Cronbach’s Alpha (CA) value of each dimension and the CA rate for the overall questionnaire resulted as expected, above 0.70. Model fit of the item-factor structure acquired by EFA was examined through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and following the good fit decision regarding the fit indices, it was observed that the three-factor structure of the scale was verified. Based on these results, it was concluded that the poverty perception scale was a valid and reliable measurement tool.

Keywords:Poverty, Poverty Perception Scale, Validity, Reliability