Measuring authoritarianism in a Greek health care setting.

Measuring authoritarianism in a Greek health care setting. Psychiatriki. 2018 Jul-Sep;29(3):240-248 Authors: Arvaniti A, Livaditis M, Kalamara E, Vorvolakos T, Serdari A, Samakouri M Abstract Few studies have investigated the level of authoritarianism in the area of health. Staff with authoritarian personality may put in danger the quality of health services, especially towards stigmatized groups, such as the mentally ill and HIV positive people or the minority ethnic communities. Authoritarianism Scale (AS) by P. Heaven, is an instrument focusing on the multi-faced nature of authoritarianism and authoritarian behaviors. The aim of this study is to assess the psychometric properties of the Greek Authoritarianism Scale (AS) and to explore authoritarian attitudes of people employed in health services, in Greece. Initially, 600 individuals (health employees and medical students) were enrolled and completed AS. Additionally, 33 postgraduate students completed AS twice, in an interval of 30 days. In order to assess the psychometric properties of AS explanatory factor analysis was performed, which resulted in a 20-items scale and revealed five (5) factors: "Leadership", "Verbal hostility", "Military way of thinking", "Fear-Suspiciousness", "Achievement Motivation". Cronbach's alpha value overall was satisfactory (0.79), while values for every factor separately ranged from 0.55 to 0.76 showing moderate to satisfactory reliability. AS's test...
Source: Psychiatriki - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Psychiatriki Source Type: research