Assessment of the Dimensionality and Comparability in Legal Cynicism Measurement

Legal cynicism refers to a general contempt of people toward the law and legal authorities. Gifford and Reisig proposed a scale to measure the construct and provided evidence for its multidimensional nature. As an extension of the research on this scale, this study provides answers to two questions relevant for applied empirical research. Should empirical studies of legal cynicism treat its subdimensions as distinct yet interrelated constructs with separate scale scores, or is it adequate to consider the scale unidimensional and use an overall scale score? Are the measurement properties of legal cynicism invariant across socio-demographic characteristics relevant to criminological research? Analyses of data from two German studies (sample 1, n = 342, 54.4% male, mean age 32.7; sample 2, n = 334, 49.40% male, mean age 46.07) revealed that the scale is not sufficiently unidimensional and that the measurement properties are invariant across age, gender, and educational status.