Data from: Revisiting the measurement of anomie

Sociologists coined the term "anomie" to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as 'a state of society' and as a 'state of mind', we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the 'state of society'. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.e., disintegration as lack of trust and erosion of moral standards) and a perceived breakdown in leadership (i.e., deregulation as lack of legitimacy and effectiveness of leadership). Across six studies we present evidence for the validity of the new measure, the Perception of Anomie Scale (PAS). Studies 1a and 1b provide evidence for the proposed factor structure and internal consistency of PAS. Studies 2a-c provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, assessing PAS in 28 countries, we show that PAS correlates with national indicators of societal functioning and that PAS predicts national identification and well-being (Studies 3a & 3b). The broader implications of the anomie construct for the study of group processes are discussed.

社会学家首创“失范（anomie）”一词，用以描述那些以社会解组与规制失效为特征的社会。此前的失范概念将其测量混同于“社会状态”与“心理状态”，本研究突破这一局限，厘清两种概念的内涵，并聚焦于作为“社会状态感知”的失范现象，构建该现象的分析框架与测量工具。本研究提出，失范包含两个维度：一是感知到的社会结构瓦解（即因信任缺失与道德标准滑坡所导致的解组），二是感知到的领导力崩塌（即因合法性缺失与领导效能不足所引发的规制失效）。本研究通过六项子研究，验证了全新测量工具——失范感知量表（Perception of Anomie Scale，PAS）的有效性：子研究1a与1b验证了该量表的预设因子结构与内部一致性；子研究2a至2c验证了其聚合效度与区分效度；最后，在28个国家开展该量表施测后，本研究发现失范感知量表与国家层面的社会运行指标存在显著相关，且能够预测国民身份认同与幸福感（子研究3a与3b）。文末还讨论了失范这一构念对群体过程研究的广泛启示。