Abstract

The concept of authoritarianism occupies an important place in social psychology, but most common instruments available have evidenced a series of incongruencies. To move past these problems, the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA) is proposed. The RWA scale considers the three dimensions that are made up of different ideological attitudes, among which, that express support for strategies that privilege collective security, with a base in authority and collective order, at the expense of individual autonomy and free expression. The objective of this study is to adapt and validate an abbreviated version of the RWA. A non-probability convenience sample (n=341) composed of residents from diverse regions of Chile is used. The scale was translated from English into Spanish, retro translated and cross-checked by experts. Of the original 36 items, 12 were selected according to their psychometric indicators, semantics and suitability to the context. The results showed good psychometric indicators: reliability indices (α = 0.86 and ω = 0.92) and goodness of fit in the CFA that confirmed a three factor structure (X2 = 69.41, CFI = 0.98, TLI= 0.98, SRMR = 0.04, RMSEA = 0.04 and AIC = 13871.30). The indicators of the tests for invariance by sex allow us to affirm that the assumptions are not violated up to the strict level. These results support that ACT-12 is a useful instrument for measuring complex sociopolitical phenomena, as they provide evidence of construct validity.