A Methodology to Measure Procedural Justice in the Political Sphere

Abstract

Perceived justice in political interactions affects people's attitudes toward individual government representatives, political institutions, and the political system as a whole. Psychological research has shown that when assessing fairness in the political realm, individuals adhere to norms that describe judgement processes and how citizens are treated. Consequently, to measure perceived justice in political interactions, individuals are asked to evaluate the extent to which these norms are adhered to. The current article describes the development and validation of a Russian-language questionnaire for measuring procedural justice in the political sphere. The questionnaire's creation drew from concepts used in studying justice in business, legal, and political contexts. At two stages of the study (N1 = 1931, N2 = 1766), participants completed a pooled online questionnaire which consisted of a test to measure procedural fairness, as well as tests to assess the questionnaire's convergent validity: an overall assessment of the fairness of the political system, emotions towards it, trust in political institutions, political cynicism, and populism. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed using Mplus statistical software to examine the questionnaire's structure. The final version of the questionnaire included four subscales, allowing measurement of different aspects of procedural justice in political interactions. Analysis of the questionnaire's structure indicated that the four-factor structure fit the data well and was consistent across different gender and age groups. Convergent validity analysis demonstrated that all components of procedural justice in political interactions were positively associated with overall evaluations of the fairness of the political system, positive emotions toward it, and political trust but negatively associated with negative emotions and political cynicism. Thus, the developed questionnaire can be utilized to measure procedural justice in the political sphere within Russian-speaking samples.