NCJ Number
215570
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 11 Issue: 2 Dated: September 2006 Pages: 283-295
Date Published
September 2006
Length
13 pages
Annotation
With the development of a Victim Concern Scale (VCS), the authors attempt to assess the VCS’s relation to a variety of outcome and other attitude measures.
Abstract
Depending on which Victim Concern Scale (VCS) was used either two or four factors emerged. In all cases, general concern for victims and concern for culpable victims factors were separately identified. Items clustered along two identifiable dimensions: concern for vulnerable/violent crime victims and concern for property/minor crime victims. In general, older respondents and female participants expressed more concern for victims, including culpable victims. Those endorsing a rehabilitation orientation towards offenders tended to express higher levels of concern for identifiable victim groups. It appears that the VCS taps into a unique dimension of concern about victims, a dimension that differs from generalized empathy. In addition, the results suggest that the VCS can be considerably downsized. A 22-item version is capable of assessing the kinds of concerns for victims that this study attempted to address. In this study, the authors sought to examine both the crime-victim status issue and the hypothesized contributing attitudinal factors. In this process, the authors developed a measure of attitudes towards victims to assess how victim concern overlapped with or differed from general empathy and whether attitudes towards victims were consistent with other crime- and offender-related beliefs and attitudes. The 54-item Victim Concern Scale was developed to assess levels of concern for diverse types of crime victims. In Phase I, the instrument itself was constructed, tested, and refined. In Phase II, the VCS was further subjected to psychometric analysis and compared with several other constructs and a series of case-specific judgments about two depicted victims. Tables, references