Attributions on the Causes of General and Child Poverty in Argentina

SEGRETIN S; REYNA C; LIPINA S

Congreso; Society for Research in Child Development Virtual Biennial Meeting; 2021

SRCD

Background: In the last decades, different studies have addressed the perspectives of peopleregarding the causes of poverty, as they could play a fundamental role in the development ofindividual and social attitudes, beliefs and expectations towards people living in poverty, and inthe strategies implemented to solve problems ( Babjaková et al., 2019). Also, many of thosestudies have investigated the causes of poverty using the theoretical model proposed by Feagin(1972) which suggests three broad explanations: (1) Individualistic (causal attribution is placedon the poor themselves); (2) structural (poverty is due to external social and economic factors),and (3) fatalistic (which attribute poverty to factors such as bad luck). In addition, most of thosestudies have been carried out regarding the causes of poverty in general, identifying very fewstudies (Dunga & Makalima, 2016) aimed at studying specifically the causes of child poverty.Given the high incidence of poverty in Argentina (INDEC, 2020), an area of ​​social priority for ourcommunity, and of scientific concern for generating basic and applied knowledge, is the study ofthe attributions of the causes of poverty in general, as well as child poverty specifically.OBJECTIVE: The present study proposes to obtain evidence of the psychometric properties ofa questionnaire that measures the causal attributions of general and child poverty in the localcontext. METHODS: A virtual questionnaire was implemented in the Google Form platform in September2018. Recruitment was done through a flyer disseminated on social networks that gives accessto a page with a description of the study and a consent check box (procedures were approvedby the IRB). Participants: The sample included responses from 1659 citizens of Argentina from17 to 90 years old (M = 45.72, SD = 16.94). Instrument: The questionnaire included 32 itemsaimed at evaluating causes of general poverty, and 30 items on the causes of child poverty.Participants were asked to indicate the importance of each item as a cause of poverty on a five-point Likert-type scale (1=does not matter; 5=extremely important). Analytical plan: Weconducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (separately from the general and childcauses of poverty) and retained items with factor loadings at or above .40. The analyses are stillunder review by authors.RESULTS: Preliminary results about causal attributions of general poverty suggest a model ofthree factors, which coincide with those proposed in the literature (RMSEA=0.065; CFI=0.858;TLI=0.84). In the case of the causal attributions of child poverty, two models were identified.Given that we have not identified previous studies aimed at evaluating the causes of childpoverty in the terms proposed here, both models are considered. The first suggests threefactors (structural, familiar, and parental explanations); and the second indicates two factors(structural and familiar causes). Both have adequate and similar psychometric properties(RMSEA=0.071/0.070; CFI=0.879/0.884; TLI=0.857/0.861).Having a valid and reliable instrument on the causal attributions of general and child povertywould be important to advance in the understanding of poverty as a complex andmultidimensional phenomena.